the curious phonology of Wisconsin

[Wilson Gray]

On Nov 21, 2004, at 6:13 PM, Dennis R. Preston wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "Dennis R. Preston" <preston at MSU.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: the curious phonology of Wisconsin
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> Good parsing arnold, but there does appear to be one phonological
> element which Wisconsonites have which is not shared with even their
> close Sotan and (some) Michigander talkalikes. The syllable division
> of the state name is
>
> wI - skan - s at n
>
> not wIs - con - s at n
>
> as the rest of us have it.
>
> It appears to be lexical rather than general (since they do not do
> funny things with the syllable division for such words as
> 'miscalculate').
>
> Ah mimber whin Ah first wint up there frum Loovull to git me mah PhD
> how odd it sounded. I couldn't even figger out what they was doin fer
> a long time.
>
> Cheeseheads; funny talkers.
>
> dInIs

As fate and coincidence would have it, when my father first went up to
Madison from his home hamlet of Moundville, Alabama, to get what was
then an LlB but is now a JD, the locals had problems with his
Alabama-backwater version of BE. As he put it, "When I first went up
yonder to go to school, folk in Wisconsin couldn't understand my
Alabama brogue." The OED has "brogue, n. A strongly-marked dialectal
pronunciation or accent."  Webster's New World has "the pronunciation
peculiar to a dialect." But this definition appears to be missing from
DARE and even the word is missing from HDAS.

-Wilson Gray

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>
>> Randy Quaid, interviewed by Lillian Ross (in The New Yorker of
>> 11/22/04, p. 39) about his role in Sam Shepard's new play, "The God of
>> Hell":
>> -----
>> Quaid, who lives in Beverly Hills with his wife, Evi, explained that
>> he
>> had to develop a Wisconsin accent for his role as a dairy farmer.  "I
>> had to make my 'r's more pronounced," he said.  "Wisconsinites talk
>> from the front of their mouths, because they don't want to breathe in
>> the cold."
>> ------
>>
>> arnold, guessing that the intended parsing was
>>   [breathe in]  [the cold], not
>>   [breathe]  [in [the cold]]
>
>
> --
> Dennis R. Preston
> University Distinguished Professor of Linguistics
> Department of Linguistics and Germanic, Slavic, Asian, and African
> Languages
> A-740 Wells Hall
> Michigan State University
> East Lansing, MI 48824
> Phone: (517) 432-3099
> Fax: (517) 432-2736
> preston at msu.edu
> --
> Dennis R. Preston
> University Distinguished Professor of Linguistics
> Department of Linguistics and Germanic, Slavic, Asian, and African
> Languages
> A-740 Wells Hall
> Michigan State University
> East Lansing, MI 48824
> Phone: (517) 432-3099
> Fax: (517) 432-2736
> preston at msu.edu
>