Mark from Dallas asks about a friend who pronounces garage with an extra r sound. Gararge? English has several common pronunciations of garage, including versions that rhyme with barrage and, in British English, carriage. That bonus r resembles the r-insertion heard in warsh for wash or Warshington for Washington, but this particular garage pronunciation has no clear regional explanation. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of ““Garage” Can Rhyme with “Barrage,” “Carriage,” or Neither”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hi there.
This is Mark Russell from Dallas, Texas.
Hi, Mark.
How are you?
Hey, Mark.
What’s going on?
I’m good.
Well, I have kind of a strange question.
A friend of mine has normal speech for the most part, except in one word that I can pull out, and that’s garage.
His parents were both from Illinois, and he was born in California, lived there as a small child and then moved to Texas early on. And he doesn’t have much of an accent in any way that I can note, except for that one word. And I’ve never heard it before. He insists on clinging to that pronunciation. I wondered if there’s some background to that way to say garage. Say it again.
Garage. Garage. He’s thrown an extra R in there. It’s a bonus R. Free R’s for everyone.
Garage.
There are at least six pronunciations of that word, G-A-R-A-G-E, that I know, but that’s not one of them.
I don’t know.
Yeah.
He’s got an R insertion thing happening.
You usually hear it in Wash or Warsh, right?
Yeah.
Or Washington or Washington.
But I’ve never heard it in that word before.
Is that a thing, Martha?
Well, it is now, yeah.
Garage.
There’s one guy from Illinois.
We have a data point.
Put it on a map.
Yeah.
Where’s my push pin?
You know what? I think I’ve heard that before, but I don’t know that it’s connected with any particular region or anything.
Maybe.
Does he not get out much?
Actually, he’s quite the social butterfly.
Oh, he is.
I don’t believe that’s it.
Okay.
All right.
All right.
Because I’ve heard several, as you said, Grant.
I mean, there’s garage and garage, if you’ve written.
And garage.
I grew up saying garage.
What about you?
Yeah, exactly.
Garage.
And Mark, what about you?
Same here, garage.
So garage, garage, garage, garage, and this guy, garage.
And I think there’s another one here.
Well, yeah, I’ve heard people say garage, just one word.
I’m going to put the car in the garage.
Well, tell him, go on and prosper, but just don’t spread it.
Okay, I’ll do that.
Mark, thanks so much for calling.
You bet.
Thank you.
Bye-bye.
Okay, bye-bye.
Hey, you know, you never know.
One data point can turn into a map full of pens, right?
It could.
There could be a whole group out there.
Remember when we talked about the names for the end of a loaf of bread, the heels?
Oh, yes.
And we had the one.
Yeah, we had the Kronka.
It turned out to be Polish, right?
Right.
Who knew that that many people had Polish grandparents, right?
Who knew?
Oh, my gosh.
And now the map is covered with red pins because all these people are like, yeah, my parents were, my grandparents were Polish.
I know that word.
And we’re like, oh, mine weren’t.
So this guy in Illinois could be onto something, right?
Garage?
All of Illinois is going to rise up and say, Arr, garage.
Garage.
Madam garage.
It’s the second to our movement.
I bet there’s a Facebook group, or there soon will be.
Call us and tell us what you think.
Or send an email to words@waywordradio.org.
And you can always find us on Facebook, too.
