All the Ways to Pronounce “Bagel”

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

This is Susan McCaffrey, and I am calling from East Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Hello.

Hello, Susan.

Welcome to the show. What’s up?

Well, I am here with my class. I teach social studies, and my seventh graders are here,

And they would love to say hello to you. May they?

Yes, please.

Please.

Hi, Marvani.

That’s them.

But we do have a question.

And we got to talking one day about how every culture has a type of bread or grain.

And our students gave lots of examples.

And the word bagel came up.

And they wondered where bagels, what culture that’s representing.

And I had a couple of students who said bagels, bagels, they’re bagels.

Well, as you know, seventh graders, we had a teachable moment, we like to call it that.

And we had quite a conversation about bagel versus bagel.

And I started some research, and then I just thought I’m a big, big fan.

I never have missed a single show, and I thought, this is a job for Martha and Grant.

Da-da-da!

Da-da-da-da-da!

Da-da-da-da!

To the rescue!

And I have the student who really held her own, and she is right at my elbow.

Oh, yes, please.

Oh, great.

And I’ll put Emma on.

Hi.

Hi, Emma.

Welcome to the show.

What can we help you with?

The pronunciation of…

Of that particular type of bread?

Of that round bread with a hole in the middle?

Yeah, of a bagel.

You say bagel?

I do say bagel.

-huh.

And where did you learn bagel?

Well, I think it was from my grandpa.

So other people in your family say bagel instead of bagel.

I think it’s only my grandparents.

I’ve always heard bagel.

Yeah, my grandpa says bagel. I say bagel.

But everyone else says it the normal way.

And where are your grandparents from?

America.

From Michigan?

Yeah, just from Michigan.

Okay, gotcha.

Well, there’s something happening right now in English in North America.

In the United States, it’s called the Northern Cities Vowel Shift, V-O-W-E-L.

And in Canada, it’s called the Canadian Vowel Shift.

And it’s kind of the same thing.

It’s where some of the vowels are changing their sounds very rapidly for some speakers of the language.

Now, this has happened before in English, the great vowel shift, but it doesn’t happen very often.

So what happens is one vowel changes.

And then in response to that, a speaker who has that vowel change kind of shifts all their vowels around so that other words get affected, too.

And we can see it in words like B-A-G.

How do you pronounce B-A-G?

Bag.

Bag, okay.

Some people who say baggle also say bag instead of bag, which is really interesting.

Yeah.

But in any case, you are one of many, many, many, many people throughout the northern United States,

Kind of the western Great Lakes, as far over as Washington State,

And pockets in other parts of the country where people say baggle instead of bagel.

And it’s a part of your dialect.

It’s part of who you are.

Well, that’s interesting.

Yeah.

Although there are pockets in the United States where they don’t say either one of those.

They say begle.

Begle?

Yeah, as if it were B-E-G-G-L-E, begle.

Well.

Emma, thank you so much for talking with us.

Let us talk to Ms. McCaffrey again.

Hi, I’m back again.

Hey, so what we did was we told Emma that there are a lot of people who say it the way that she says it.

It is part of a vowel shift happening in the United States and Canada.

Oh, my goodness.

And it’s part of her identity.

Now, not everyone says it, and not everyone will, and it’s not necessarily age-specific.

As we heard about her grandpa, you can find people at all ages where their vowels are shifting around,

And it’s affecting more words than this one.

I bet if you did a survey of your class on words like bag, B-A-G, or vague, V-A-G-U-E,

You would find other speakers in the class also pronounce them differently than is considered standard.

Wow.

And it’s not in one region or it’s not a certain age.

It’s not very age-graded.

It’s a little bit young.

But like Emma said, her grandfather does it.

So it’s not something done by young people.

And there’s no blame to be placed there.

Mostly northern states, western part of the Great Lakes, as far west as Washington state.

And in the lower part of some of the Canadian provinces.

I did see some evidence that there may be a little Canadian influence.

And we in Michigan are very close to Canfield, and we do share some.

We do get some connotations.

Let me give you one bit of homework before we go.

Homework?

Yes.

Okay.

-oh, my students love that you’re giving me homework.

They have smiles from ear to ear.

You need to Google and look for a reliable source on the Northern Cities Vowel Shift, V-O-W-E-L, Northern Cities Vowel Shift.

Yeah, that will explain a lot of what’s happening with Emma’s bagel.

I so appreciate your time and your research.

Have a great day.

All right.

Thanks so much.

Keep educating our kids, all right?

I will.

Goodbye.

Thank you.

Bye-bye.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

How cool was that?

That was fantastic.

There’s a line from William Lebov, the famous sociolinguist, that applies here.

He’s talking about that vowel shift, and he says,

The logic that connects five changes resemble a game of musical chairs.

That’s the five main vowels.

In which each inhabitant of a position moves one unit to dislodge the next.

Oh, that’s a good picture.

So we are automatically, when one vowel changes,

We are automatically trying to separate the other sounds

So they don’t sound very much alike.

Sometimes we fail, and that’s where we get things like

All the three Marys sounding alike, Mary, Mary, and Mary,

Or cot and cot sounding alike, or don and don sounding alike.

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