Local Vernacular

On the same day last week, someone sent me an e-mail with one of those "You May Be From Wisconsin If…" lists like this one. Later that day I was surfing the Net and came across the site Chicago Vocabulary!. Having grown up in Chicago and moved to rural Wisconsin at age 14, I could appreciate both sites. I have an obvious Midwestern accent that, I'm told, varies between the Wisconsin and Chicago varieties. For instance, every native Wisconsonian I've ever met pronounces "Chicago" as "shi-kah-go". Now, most of my family pronounces it as "shi-kaw-go" and so do I. This is a dead giveaway as to my origins.

Beginning with site about Chicago vernacular, I found that I recognized most of the entries. For instance, "beef" as in "Gimme a beef!" is short for an Italian beef sandwich or that "a Polish" means a Polish sausage. Plus I knew the names given to the various expressways such as the Kennedy or the Eisenhower. It was funny to see various businesses listed such as Empire Carpet and Victory Autowreckers because of their ubiquitous television commercials that I remember well from my youth. However, there are some entries that I either don't recall ever having heard or were created after I left the city. For example, I don't remember ever hearing the top of the John Hancock referred to as "The Top of the Cock" but this could just be my memory at fault here. Then there's the Allstate Arena which was the Rosemont Horizon when I lived there. Of course the list wouldn't be complete without the dig at we Wisconsinites and so "cheesehead" makes the list.

In addition to terms specific to Chicago, there was the odd term for something that's universal but has a different name depending on location. Take for example the ATM – the Automated Teller Machine. In Chicago they seem to be known as "cash stations" as per the name of the largest ATM network in the city. Amongst my crowd here in Wisconsin, they're known as TYME machines, after the ATM network TYME – Take Your Money Everywhere. Upon moving to Wisconsin, I noticed that many people pronounced "creek" like "krik" as in one of guys that discovered DNA. Chicagoans strictly say it as "kreek" – like seek with the long e sound and most definitely not with the short i sound. I also found a "You May Be From Chicago If…" list and it includes these:

Grocery stores have bags, not sacks.
You drink pop.

The use of "sacks" tends to be more of a rural thing, from my experience and I know I always use "pop" and never "soda". In fact, I think pop is pretty standard in Wisconsin. Still, I guess that a short drive up or down I-90 can produce a profound effect on speech.

The "You May Be From Wisconsin If…" list is pretty humorous. We have "You can identify an Illinois accent" and "You know what a bubbler is". I don't think I encountered the term "bubbler" until I moved to Madison. It means a water fountain and, from my understanding, the word comes from Milwaukee. The gulf between Wisconsonians and our Illinois neighbors is evident in "Down South to you means Chicago" and "You know what a FIB is". (FIB = Fucking Illinois Bastard.) One of the things not on the above list which should be is that folks in Wisconsin measure distance by hours and time generally. I know that the list for Chicago says the same thing but my experience was always that people in Chicago would refer to a location within the city by the nearest intersection of major streets or nearest landmark like a ballpark, museum, or something similar. If a location was in the 'burbs, they'd refer to it as being beyond a particular side of town if it were in an inner suburb and, if it were in an outer 'burb, they'd describe it in relation to an inner one. I mean, travel times vary so much depending on the time of day, which route you take, if there's an accident on the expressway, if there's a sporting event that day, etc. In Wisconsin, we almost always refer to a location, especially outside of town, by driving time. The answer to "Where is Small Town X?" will almost always be phrased something like, "About 4 hours north". At this point one might add something like "About 30 miles outside of Rhinelander" or wherever the location happens to be. Another thing that Wisconsonians refer to in these cases which Chicagoites don't when referring to location is county. As I said, folks in Chicago tend to describe locations by their relation to the city whereas we here in Wisconsin love to refer to which county a location is in. E.g. -

"What are you up to this weekend?"
"Me and my dad are going fishing up in Bayfield county"

I would also say that, if someone asks where a particular town is, that it's also fairly common for someone to begin by stating in which county the town resides.

My friend, Old Man Standiford, pointed out another bit of vernacular to me recently. He was speaking with someone from California, I think, and the woman asked what he was going to do over the weekend. He casually replied that he was going to "go drinking". She told him that only people from Wisconsin use drinking as a destination. Apparently the rest of the country would say something like "I'm going to Louie's Tavern for drinks". Who knew?

As I wrote this, I began wondering if there is such a thing as a Madison vocabulary or vernacular. Along the lines of the Chicago Vocabulary site above, there are certainly various locations that could make the list. The Square, State Street, Willy Street, and Miffland come to mind. I suppose you could at "The Co-Op" to the list as Madisonians use this to refer to the Willy Street Cooperative. Let's see…"The Union" for Memorial Union. Although there are a billion farmer's markets in and around town, when we say "the farmer's market", we usually mean the Dane County Farmer's Market. Another could be "Halloween". I think that, in recent years, the term has come to be used to signify the riots on State Street on that day as much as the day itself. "The Funky Drummer" refers to Clyde Stubblefield, former with James Brown's backing band. I suppose we could also throw in "TYME machine" and "FIB" from above while we're at it. Should the Beltline be included? I don't know about any of my fellow Madisonians, but I still use "the Coliseum" instead of the Alliant Energy Center. (I can't remember when the name changed happened.) Does anyone call the art museum on campus by its proper name? It's still the Elvehjem to me. Is Chadborne Hall still referred to as the "Virgin Vault"? I think someone told me that the dorm is co-ed now. Doesn't the Humanities building have a peculiar nickname too? Since we're talking about the UW, we'd have to include the phrase "Ogg sucks". "Frat row". To be inclusive, I'd add Bucky and Paul Bunyan's Axe. And let's not forget "the Rathskeller". "The Bou" as referring to The Caribou, a tavern. The nicknames "Madtown" and "Madcity". How about "The Ban" referring to the smoking ban?

Any locals out there that can add to the list?