Woh, Baby

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is James. I live in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Charlotte, North Carolina. Well, we’re glad to have you, James. What’s up?

That was a word that I heard when I first moved to the area that I wondered where it came from.

I heard somebody say, so-and-so had a baby.

And they asked, well, how much did the baby weigh?

And the response was, oh, he was a big one. The baby, whoa, seven pounds, two ounces.

So whoa instead of weighed.

Yes. And I’ve tried to find out where that came from.

Where did you come from, James? And they didn’t say that there?

I’m from the eastern part of the state. And I had never heard this before until I moved to the western part of the state.

Okay. Yeah. And have you heard that woe any other way except when talking about babies and weight?

I can’t recall hearing that word in relation to other things, only when they were discussing the newborn.

You’ve heard it more than once in talking about babies.

Yes, I’ve heard it more than once.

Okay. What I think is happening here is that it’s a possible pronunciation of the word, word, W-E-R-E, in the U.S. South.

As you know, in parts of the South, people don’t pronounce their R’s.

It’s called lack of roticity, after the Greek letter RHO, which stands for the R sound.

So it can sound like whoa, like that, exactly like you say it, or whoa.

And so this is recorded in the dialect dictionaries as one of the sounds that W-E-R-E is pronounced as.

It would sound very much like whoa.

And so you could see somebody saying the baby were eight pounds as a dialect way of saying the baby was eight pounds.

Very interesting.

That’s my guess.

I don’t have any way of knowing without gathering more data on this.

You’re a good field worker here.

You’ve delivered good data, which I appreciate.

Nothing like having a good researcher out there accumulating good data.

Well, I’ve been listening out to see if I hear it many more times.

But so far, it’s usually in connection with discussing the baby.

Yeah, that’s interesting that it should be that one particular domain of life, just with the little ones.

Well, James, if you come across it anywhere else, by all means, give us a call or drop us a line and let us know.

I’d be really interested to hear more about this.

And, of course, others listening can also let us know.

All right. I’ll be sure to do that.

All right. Well, you take care of yourself and thanks for chatting with us today. Really appreciate it.

Thank you.

All right.

Thanks for calling, James.

Bye-bye.

Bye.

Bye.

Well, if you’ve heard this usage or you’re curious about some other aspect of how they talk where you live, we’d love to hear about it.

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