Pronouncing “Milk” as “Melk”

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Tim from Jacksonville, Florida.

Hey, Tim. Welcome. What’s up?

Hey, so I’m calling in because I have a couple words that have been sort of following me around my entire life. I’ve been made fun of for the way I’ve said them. The way I say the words milk and eggs, which it’s funny. My ex used to tell me the way I said it used to send a shiver down her spine. And I guess when I’ve broken down the words, I sort of get where they’re getting at. Instead of milk like a till or a miller, I say milk. Or instead of eggs like beggar, I say eggs. And I have a mother who has a pretty strong South Carolinian accent. And then a father who is from Canada and has a pretty strong Newfoundland accent. And I was just wondering if maybe I picked up those words or pronunciations from them, or maybe it’s something locally from my region. I’m not quite sure.

Were you raised in Jacksonville?

I was raised in Jacksonville, yes. I was here for most of my life.

Okay. And so you say, so milk as in the white dairy product from cows, M-I-L-K. You say it how?

Like M-E-L-K, milk. It sounds right to me, but most people I say to, they’ll stop me and they’re like, what? And so, yeah. And then the white or brown spheroid objects from chickens that we fry for breakfast, you say those as?

As eggs, like in almost like A-G-E-S, you know, like instead of like egg as in like beggar. So, yeah. And most people would expect to hear milk or eggs.

Martha, what do you say?

I say milk and eggs.

Milk and eggs. And you know what’s funny, Tim? There are a number of people listening who either can’t hear the difference between you and Martha, or they’re hearing you say it, Tim, and they’re like, yeah, that sounds right. That sounds fine to me. Milk. Milk sounds 100% fine.

It feels weird saying it.

But you, just because people have teased you for it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, that’s true. When you go to bed at night and there is the fluffy thing at the top of the bed where you, the head of the bed that you put your head on, what do you call that?

Pillow.

Say it again?

Pillow.

You don’t say pillow, P-E-L-L-O-W.

No, I don’t say pillow. I don’t say pillow.

Well, let me put you at ease. And Martha and I don’t do a lot of finger wagging on this show, and I don’t want to do any now, but people should just relax a little bit when they hear you say milk and eggs, because both of those pronunciations are sprinkled throughout the United States.

I want to focus because it’s just going to take too long to do both, but let’s focus on milk, M-I-L-K, and your pronunciation, milk. It is especially common in the Great Lakes. We’ll get to Tallahassee in a minute. But it is found throughout the United States and Canada. It is found throughout North America. Field reports exist for it for at least the last hundred years. So it’s not even new, including parts of the Carolinas where your mom is from and parts of Canada where your dad is from. So it is entirely possible that you picked it up from them, even if you don’t exactly hear them say it. There may be occasions where you hear them say it. Some people try to pin that melk, M-E-L-K pronunciation, on Dutch or German heritage because there are words like that in those languages. But really what’s happening is just a function of a certain type of vowel before a certain type of L, the letter L. It’s called lax vowel lowering, lax, L-A-X. And it’s a linguistic term, lax, not a negative comment about someone’s motivation to speak well.

And so I just want to clarify here, this is something happening in sprinkled patches throughout North America. It doesn’t make you a bad speaker. It’s a dialect feature. This is something happening in the language because of the structure of words. Because one sound follows another sound. And so it’s a natural thing to happen in the mouth. So it’s not surprising to hear you say it.

That actually is very quite interesting now. It makes me want to go talk to my two sides of the family and see which ones I might have picked it up from. So those aren’t exactly the same sounds, but I just want to point out that it is incredibly common as languages change and morph for vowels to fluctuate and they move and they become new things. We’ve had vowel shifts happen in English as a whole. We’ve had vowel shifts currently taking place right now as we speak in North America. And this milk pronunciation may end up being permanent, at least for some speakers of some dialects of North American English. So it is always changing. So when people ask you why you say milk, what you need to say is it’s a dialect feature. It’s just who I am and it’s based upon how I speak. It’s my idiolect. Idiolect is your personal language and all its features put together.

Tim, you got to run out and order a coffee with milk right now?

Milk?

Yeah, I’ll crack a few eggs, too.

Eggs.

Sounds good.

All right. Take care of yourself, Tim. Thanks for calling. I appreciate that.

Bye-bye.

Okay, bye.

Appreciate it, too. Call us with your language question, 877-929-9673.