Brollies and Bumbershoots

You’re listening to A Way with Words, the show about language and how we use it. I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette. If I call my umbrella a bumbershoot, I suspect that most people in this country would say, oh, she’s using a Britishism. But they wouldn’t say that if they’d read the wonderful new book by Lynn Murphy. It’s called The Prodigal Tongue, The Love-Hate Relationship between American and British English. Murphy is a linguist who grew up in New York State, but she’s lived for the past 18 years in Brighton, England.

And Grant, as you know, her book is a delight.

And it goes far, far beyond the usual tired treatments of the differences between these two kinds of English.

We’ve all heard, for example, the stories of how the trunk of your car is a boot.

Right, yeah, or the bonnet and so forth.

Right, or knock me up in the morning, which in Britain means to wrap on my door to wake me up.

Or could mean that, but doesn’t have to mean that.

She kind of gets to that.

Right.

But the prodigal tongue shows us how much more there is to understand about these kinds of differences.

For example, in the case of bumbershoot, this term for umbrella originated not in England, but right here in the United States in the early 20th century.

And it became associated with British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, who’s often depicted in cartoons with an umbrella.

And then there was the 1968 Disney movie Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, which had a British character in there who talked about his hat and his bumper chute.

But in England, there’s an entirely different slang term for umbrella, and that’s brawly.

Brawly, B-R-O-L-L-Y, brawly.

Right.

So lots of stereotypes and misunderstandings get cleared up in this book.

And we’re going to talk about some more of them later in the show.

Yeah, the stereotypes and misunderstandings are what appealed to me most about this, because I think what Lynn Murphy has done with this book, The Prodigal Tongue, has created the new definitive linguistics-focused work on the differences between American and British English.

Like, I think I don’t have to look at my other books anymore.

This is the one.

This is the one.

If you’ve got something on this topic or anything else related to language, give us a call, 877-929-9673, or email words@waywordradio.org, or talk to us on Twitter @wayword.

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, Mark. I’m E. Grant.

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 are bagels, what culture that’s representing.

And I had a couple of students who said 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! 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.

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 bagel 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 bagel.

Bagel?

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

Whoa.

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.

It’s part of her identity.

Now, not everyone says it, and not everyone will, and it’s not necessarily each 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 Canterbury, and we do share some.

We do get some pronunciations.

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.

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.

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, Mary, or cot and caught sounding alike, or don and dawn sounding alike.

877-929-9673.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hey, my name’s TJ. I’m calling from Stowe, Vermont.

What can we do for you?

So I am actually a groomer, and I’m pretty new, but I’ve been learning a lot of really good techniques of laying corduroy.

Which is what we do up on the slopes at night is perfect that whole slope for everyone and lay down some really nice corduroy.

So people can enjoy it the next day.

And that’s kind of the term I wanted to call about.

I wear corduroy.

I’ve always worn corduroy since I can remember, and that’s the term we use when we’re grooming the slopes.

I always listen to your guys’ show when I’m out there grooming in the mornings.

So I just wanted to call in about it.

I love that, TJ.

I didn’t know that that’s what the people were called who take care of the slopes, the groomers.

You’re not grooming animals.

You’re grooming the snow and the ski slopes, right?

Exactly.

Very cool.

Well, tell us about creating corduroy.

Yeah, what is that?

What does that look like?

If I go out there with my skis strapped on, what do I expect?

Imagine if you took a really, really close-up photograph of wearing corduroy pants or a corduroy jacket.

That’s pretty much what we put down.

And you use a tiller, which is dragged behind your snowcat,

And you’re in this big machine that’s about 15, 20 feet wide and about the same length.

And you drag this big mat that chops up all the snow and has texture on the back,

And it lays a nice, beautiful corduroy.

On the groomed snow surfaces up on the hill.

Okay, so it’s like little grooves that you then ski down, correct?

Exactly, yep.

You ski parallel to the groove, not across the groove.

Yes, exactly.

So for the most part, we’re going up and down the slopes,

Taking uphill and downhill passes, and, yeah, it creates parallel lines.

So it kind of mimics the terrain and mimics the natural flow of the terrain in a parallel way.

And I think that the reason that Grant was asking if it’s parallel or perpendicular to the route that the skiers take is that this term comes from the idea of a corduroy road, which is laying logs perpendicular to the path.

Say you’re trying to get over a boggy surface and you make a little bridge out of logs, and that’s a corduroy road.

But they are perpendicular and not parallel like your lines.

That’s interesting.

Yeah, I had no idea.

And, you know, that’s something we have up here in Vermont all the time, you know, hiking trails everywhere.

It’s a familiar sight, and I had no idea it would harbor back to bridges.

That’s pretty amazing.

Yeah, and the etymology of the word corduroy itself is a little bit squishy.

There’s a folk etymology that it might have to do with the word for king in French,

But we don’t think that that’s really the case.

No, there was a fabric called duroy that was probably made by the English,

And they called it after a French name to make it seem classy,

And they added the duroy on their own.

And it was really interesting.

Then the French borrowed the term back into French

And basically call it the king’s cloth or something similar to that.

But that’s the 1700s.

Is that jive with what you know, Martha?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, 1700s.

And TJ, I have another term that you can call yourself besides a groomer.

Yep.

Whistle britches.

Do you know this term?

Whistle britches.

Yeah.

I’ve not heard that one.

Yeah, whistle britches is a term for corduroy pants or somebody who wears them.

That’s the sound your legs make when you’re scissoring,

When you’re walking and your pants go zzz, zzz, zzz.

Whistle britches.

I’ve got to write that one down.

That’s pretty good.

TJ, thanks so much for calling.

Yep, have a good day.

Thanks, TJ.

Take care now.

Bye-bye.

Call us with your language question, 877-929-9673,

Or send it to us in email.

That address is words@waywordradio.org.

This show’s about language examined through family, history, and culture.

Stick around.

You’re listening to A Way with Words, the show about language and how we use it.

I’m Martha Barnette.

And I’m Grant Barrett.

And here he is, that handsome quiz guy, John Janeski.

Hi, John.

Oh, hi.

Thank you, Grant.

Hey, John. Looking good.

Hi, Martha. Thank you so much.

I have a great quiz today.

This is sort of one of the things we do at Trivia NYC, one of our pub quiz nights.

One of our rounds is called Name Three.

It’s sort of a common bonds round.

We’ve done this before.

It’s sort of like the board game Tribond, where you’re given three items and asked to figure out what they have in common.

For example, if I say a playground, a trombone, a microscope, what do those have in common?

They all have a slide.

Slides, right.

Slides in a playground, a trombone slide in a microscope, you look at slides.

Now, I’ll give you three things.

You tell me what they have in common, what they share, what the tie is that binds them together.

Here we go.

All right.

An incline, a report card, USDA inspected beef.

A grade.

Grades, yes.

Very good.

Right.

A criminal, your phone, an ion.

A charge.

A charge.

Things that you charge, yes.

How about dip, drum, joy?

Dip, drum, joy.

So you have a road in the dip.

You have an ice cream dip.

I think you got them, Arthur.

Say it loud.

Yes, sticks.

Dip, stick, drum, stick, joy, stick.

Yes.

How about, speaking of sticks, stick, pat, tub.

Butter.

Yeah, butter.

They serve butter.

How about, speaking of which, Dagwood, Cuban, banh mi.

Sandwiches.

Sandwiches.

Yummy.

Jib, spinnaker, latin.

Those are sales?

Those are sales.

Or new cryptocurrencies.

You never know.

There’s so many of them.

That’s right.

You turn around and the next thing you know, it’s a cryptocurrency.

Yes.

How about this one?

Nuclear fission, a gymnast, a banana.

Nuclear fission.

Gymnast.

A banana.

Splits.

Bruise.

Splits is right.

Grant’s got it.

Splits.

Splitting an atom.

Gymnast is splits.

Of course.

How about…

Yeah.

Sorry, let me say that again.

So banana split, a gymnast split, and then fission splits.

Right, splitting the atom.

How about if I say land, house, sleeves?

Land, house, sleeves.

Long, short, flip.

What was the second one?

Land ho, house.

House sleeves.

This is definitely a blank land, blank house, blank sleeves.

Brick.

Home sleeves.

Wow.

The last one is an old song.

Green.

Yes, green land, greenhouse, green sleeves.

Finally, if I said ghost, doctor, sergeant, what would you say?

Sergeant Peppers.

Pepper.

Oh.

Yes.

Ghost Pepper, Dr. Pepper, and Sergeant Pepper.

Yes.

That was tough.

Yeah.

But you guys did fantastic.

Nice work.

That’s cool.

Is it Bond?

B-O-N-D?

B-O-N-D.

Tri-Bond, yes.

Oh, I want to do those every day just to keep my brain supple.

I bet if we Google that, we’ll find a bunch, right?

I’m sure you will.

John, thank you for another wonderful quiz.

We really appreciate it.

And we will see you next week.

If you’d like to talk with us about any aspect of language whatsoever,

A word you heard that caught your ear or a dispute you’re having at work or school,

Give us a call, 877-929-9673.

Here’s a passage I really liked from the book The Prodigal Tongue by Lynn Murphy.

An American acquaintance in the U.K. was confused when her British doctor asked about her waterworks.

Having never heard that euphemism for the urinary tract, she thought he was asking if she cried a lot.

Oh, wow.

That’s a great distinction.

How’s your waterworks?

Your waterworks.

And she has quite a bit to say about euphemisms for certain parts of the body, doesn’t she?

That and for spending a penny.

Spending a penny.

All those kinds of things.

Going to the loo, so to speak, but they have different ways to speak it.

877-929-9673.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Judson from Texas.

Hey, Judson, welcome.

What can we do for you?

Thank you.

So I had a question.

I was reading a novel recently by an author from Montreal, Canada,

And she used the phrase long suit,

And it was used in the same context as I would usually say strong suit.

Like if I would say social media is my strong suit, like I’m good at social media.

And I was wondering, what’s up with that?

Is there a correct way?

Or when did that kind of become two different things?

It was the first time I’d heard someone say long suit.

And, Justin, what are you picturing?

Are you picturing a suit or long johns?

I don’t really know.

I’ve never really thought of it as strong suit or long suit.

When I think of strong suit, I think of like a hand of cards in poker.

Like it’s my strong suit.

Yeah, that’s right. It’s like a suit of cards. That’s the key in both of these.

And what was the context that she used it in? What was she talking about? Or does it not matter?

It’s sort of the same context that I used mine in. It’s a crime thriller, so it was something along the lines of investigating is his long suit.

Long suit. Well, in a bunch of different card games, including Bridge and Whist, a long suit is when you hold four or more cards.

It depends on the game of the same suit.

And you can do things like build hands or somehow get to success, whatever the success is in that particular game.

But there’s the figurative use as well, which just means you’re like your strong point or your thing that you’re good at or something that you have a lot of experience at.

And strong suit is similar.

Strong suit is when you have a lot of valuable cards that don’t necessarily have to be of the same suit, again, for bridge or whist or games like that.

And it also has a figurative use.

It just means you’ve got all the skills or whatever you need in order to succeed at the task in front of you.

And so they are interchangeable in a lot of different ways when they’re in the figurative use.

In the literal use in games, they’re more specific.

So I’m wondering, is there like certain parts of the country that use one or the other?

Or is it really just kind of spread out?

No, long suit is rarer though.

So strong suit is far more common.

Okay.

So that may have something to do with why long suit is the one that seems new or unusual to you, right?

Yes.

Yeah.

And what’s interesting about both of these expressions, though, is they are kind of waning.

As games like bridge and whist grow less common and less part of the everyday language,

Those bridge terms and whist terms are kind of ensconced in the language,

And we’ve lost our connection to them as something that you might expect to see at a family gathering.

So is there something in Words with Friends or some online game that would be analogous that’s going to replace it?

A good draw, yeah.

A good sack of tiles.

I don’t know.

Judson, how about that?

That answers my question.

Thank you so much.

Okay.

Our pleasure.

Thanks for calling.

Thanks for calling.

Take care.

Bye.

Bye-bye.

877-929-9673.

Here’s another subtle difference between British English and American English that I never noticed.

In the United States, if you’re indecisive about something, you haven’t quite zeroed in on a decision,

You might say, I’m of two minds about that.

In Britain, you say, I’m in two minds.

Oh, interesting.

Isn’t that cool?

Just the preposition, but it seems so different.

Yeah, so subtle, right?

And it reminds me of another difference.

We say brainstorm to mean an idea that just suddenly occurred to me.

I had a brainstorm.

Let’s do this.

They might say I had a brain wave instead of brainstorm.

Pretty cool.

Yes.

And they also came up with thought shower, which a lot of people think is in Americanism.

But it’s a pushback against a brainstorm.

Another thing that Lynn Murphy addresses in her book, Prodigal Tongue, is that the English speakers in the UK often say that anything they don’t like must be in Americanism. They just assume

If it’s annoying and it’s in English, their cousins across the pond came up with it. But so often,

When you get down to the history of all of these things on the I really hate this list,

It’s actually a Britishism first. Right, right. So you get a lot of sociolinguistics

In there as well. 877-929-9673. Email words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Laura Cole, and I’m calling from Bowling Green, Kentucky.

Well, hello, Laura.

Hey, Laura.

What’s up?

Well, I am calling because I have a question that came up while I was at work.

We were talking about offering someone a position,

And one of my consultants used the phrase, what behind the ears?

And I was just kind of curious about the origin behind this saying.

I thought it was a little gross sounding, to be honest.

So I just want to hear what you guys had to say.

And so what did they mean by somebody was wet behind the ears?

She said she meant that they were inexperienced.

Yeah, well, wet behind the ears goes back to an image of a newly born animal, like a calf or a colt.

And the idea that when they come out of their mother, when they’re born, they’re wet all over.

And the last place to dry is right there behind the ears, behind the floppy ears.

Okay.

That makes better sense than what I was thinking.

Oh, yeah?

What were you thinking?

Or can you say it?

I wasn’t thinking about animals.

I was thinking, like, childbirth or something.

Well, that too.

I’ve never had a kid, so I would have nothing to really compare that to.

They’re wet.

Trust me.

I hear.

Yeah, and English speakers aren’t the only people who have noticed this.

There’s a German expression that means roughly the same thing.

Oh, really?

Yeah, and it’s older than the English expression,

And there’s some speculation that the English speakers borrowed it from the Germans.

So the idea has been around for a very long time.

1600s at least, right?

Wow.

Yeah.

So basically the equivalent of born yesterday and still damp.

Well, that makes much better sense.

Does it?

Yes.

Yeah.

Have you ever heard, Laura, the mixed metaphor of it

Where somebody says green behind the ears?

No, never.

I’ve never heard that, really.

Because that’s common also in German.

German and English speakers both say green behind the ears,

Fully knowing that it’s a mixed metaphor,

Usually fully knowing that it’s a mixed metaphor.

Green meaning new.

Yeah, like a new sprout up from the ground.

Right, okay, so I hear people say they’re really green,

Like inexperienced.

I hear that all the time.

Yep, same thing.

The idea that it’s brand new just coming up.

Like a green horn.

Haven’t got their brown bark yet.

So there you go.

Well, thank you so much. I really appreciate your time.

Glad to hear from you.

Very good. Thank you very much.

Take care.

Bye.

Thank you.

There’s another German expression which would translate in English as to be thick behind the ears.

Do you know this one?

No.

It means to be crafty or sly.

Oh, really?

Yeah. And the word that means thick basically means as thick as a fist.

Something like that.

Oh, no kidding.

So to be thick behind the ears means to be crafty or sly.

That’s exactly the opposite of what I would have guessed it means.

Oh, really?

You’re thinking thick-headed.

Yeah, like a blockhead.

Yeah, not enough for brains, too much bone.

Yeah.

877-929-9673.

I had a terrific time addressing the California Association of Teachers of English this year at their state convention,

And I came across a quotation there that I really liked from Madeline L’Engle, who, of course, wrote A Wrinkle in Time.

She wrote,

And I thought that that was such a great message to give to teachers who are teaching kids,

That once you grow up, you’re still, you’re even more vulnerable.

It’s like you don’t achieve invulnerability.

That’s right.

I find that with my own son.

He thinks it will all be solved when he’s a grown man

And has his own apartments and his own job and his own life.

And yet every day we tell him that in a thousand small ways.

It’s okay to be vulnerable.

And that’s a part of being human.

And you will learn to deal with the vulnerability

And you will use it to be an emotional responsive person

Who reacts to the world in a kind, considerate way.

It’s a good thing.

Yeah, it’s a good thing.

Call us with your language questions and stories or send them to us in email.

That address is words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi there. My name is Tony. I’m calling from Escanaba, Michigan.

Hi, Tony.

What’s up?

I’m in the construction field. I do plumbing and pipe bidding.

I’m actually calling about a term that my friends and I were talking,

And they threw out the term dead nuts.

And it’s something that I’ve used, that my coworkers use, we all use in the field.

And we were all kind of laughing about it, and I was kind of curious as to what that actually means.

And how would you use it?

Usually, like, we’re laying out pipe or we’re doing a plumbing job or something like that.

You know, we measure everything out.

We cut it, and then we’ll land it.

And usually when you’ve got everything lined up perfectly, you know, it’s right where it needs to be, nothing’s wrong, you know, you’d say it’s dead nuts.

Okay.

Just to get this out of the way, because I know everyone’s wondering, the nuts in this expression has nothing to do with testicles, even though people might have dirty minds, and particularly when you’re talking about laying pipe, it has nothing to do with male genitals at all.

The other interesting thing about it is the origin of dead nuts surprisingly comes from outside the mechanical trades.

It doesn’t involve plumbers or machinists or engineers of any kind.

It may be a direct connection to being nuts about someone.

And bear with me on this.

The nuts to be nuts about someone, to be crazy for them, is about true love.

And true has another meaning, which is interesting.

So if something is true, it is directly on target.

It’s perfectly straight.

It’s right where it needs to be.

It’s unequivocally exactly what you want.

So the dead in dead nuts is an adverb describing nuts, which is an adjective.

So dead is the same dead we find in dead certain or dead even or dead heat.

It’s an emphasizing adverb.

And then the nuts just basically means to be perfectly for something, perfectly toward something, perfectly in the direction that you want, that sort of thing.

So it’s an offshoot from the older form of nuts, to be nuts on someone or to be nuts about someone or just to be nuts.

Oh, that’s awesome.

Yeah, it’s weird, right?

Very cool.

Very strange connection.

And my friends and I are totally immature now after hearing all that.

Trust me.

Even the most mature among us went the wrong direction of that.

Stop thinking about plumbing.

Yeah, yeah.

That’s awesome to hear.

By 1880s or so, we find it again and again popping up in a huge number of contexts that have nothing whatsoever to do with any kind of mechanical trade or profession.

Oh, very.

That’s awesome.

But, you know, to be nuts, they used to say to be nuts on someone or on something or nuts upon rather than nuts about like we would say today.

Really?

But it’s the same meaning, to be in love with or to be in favor of or to be obsessed with.

Oh, that’s pretty cool.

Yeah.

Heck yeah.

How about that?

Perfect.

Well, thanks for taking the time and talking to me.

All right.

Take care.

Thanks, Tony.

Bye-bye.

Yes, ma’am.

Bye.

877-929-9673.

Email words@waywordradio.org.

Another difference between British English and American English.

In the United States, you play with Legos, and then you step on a Lego and you scream bloody murder.

In Britain, you play with Lego, then step on a piece of Lego and scream blue murder.

Oh, nice.

There are just all these little differences.

I’ve heard the Lego, Legos distinction being made here by true Lego fans.

Oh, have you?

Yeah.

Whether or not you add the S for the plural or whether or not the Lego is a countdown or a mass.

Is that right?

Okay.

All right.

So the purists, huh?

It reminds me of the difference between in this country we’ll talk about eating mashed potatoes.

And in Britain you talk about eating mashed potato.

Or you just have mashed.

Or mashed.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Or scrambled eggs in this country and scrambled egg in Britain.

They’re all these super subtle differences.

One of my favorite food words that they have is spag bol.

Spag bol?

I thought I was mispronouncing spag bol.

I should say it like a British person.

Do tell.

Spaghetti bolognese.

Oh, I thought you were going to say spaghetti bol.

Spaghetti bolognese, right?

Spag bol.

But that’s how they abbreviate it, spag bol.

No kidding.

Okay.

I thought it was some Danish something, rather.

877-929-9673.

Stay tuned for more of Why We Say What We Say.

You’re listening to A Way with Words, the show about language and how we use it.

I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette.

We were talking earlier about the book The Prodigal Tongue by Lynn Murphy.

As an American linguist who’s lived almost two decades in England, she’s a close observer of the differences between American English and British English.

And sometimes those differences are quite subtle, but they’re also really fascinating.

She tells the story, for example, of how for years people around her in England referred to her American twang.

And she thought that was weird because, if anything, her own way of speaking is rather smooth.

She describes it herself as mumbly, not twangy, like a plucked banjo string.

And she assumed that British people were stereotyping all Americans and lumping them together in this group that spoke English with a twang.

And it was years before she read one British writer alluding to a Scottish twang and another alluding to a German twang.

And then she realized, as she did some more research, that in Britain the word twang can mean the sound of a plucked string, but it can also simply mean a soft accent.

And she realized that she’d been feeling insulted all that time, but maybe people weren’t actually insulting her.

And I thought that was such a cool story.

And it’s just one example of how you’re going to learn a whole lot about linguistics from this book.

It’s really like going to a pub with a friend who happens to be a linguist and is also really witty and can explain all this kind of stuff to you in a way that’s really accessible and fun.

Yeah, the twang thing reminds me of something that happens in the United States.

Linguists will often ask groups of people to take a map of the United States and circle where the bad English is and circle where the good English is.

And a lot of times if you ask them to come up with a description, people will say, oh, this is where they have a drawl or this is where they have a twang.

And it turns out Lynn was right in her American usage.

Twang is a kind of signal for rural or rustic or countryfied or bumpkin-esque.

And then a drawl is for slow or doesn’t sound educated or sounds like they’re not really listening to you.

So it’s really interesting to find these extra layers.

And I would agree with your summary of her book.

It is just like sitting down with a friend and having a talk about language over a pint.

A really smart and witty friend, right?

I need a few more of those.

Hey.

Well, I’ve got one.

Yeah. And we should also mention her blog, which you and I both really enjoy.

It’s called Separated by a Common Language.

And I have to tell people that you’ve got to go to her book’s website, too.

It’s called theprodigaltongue.com, if only to try your hand at the quizzes there.

There’s one that’s called How American Is Your English and another one that is called How British Is Your English?

And I took the British one, and I have to confess, my British English was not all that good.

You’re a very American speaker.

I learned a lot.

That’s wonderful.

We’re not just talking about British versus American English today.

We’re talking about all aspects of language, whether it’s English or Spanish or something else, give us a call, 877-929-9673, email us at words@waywordradio.org, or talk to us on Twitter.

That’s W-A-Y-W-O-R-D.

Welcome to The Way With Words.

Good afternoon. How are you?

Excellent. Who’s this?

This is Jenny Collins, Omaha, Nebraska.

Hi, Jenny. Welcome to the show. What can we do for you?

Well, Martha, I have kind of an odd little question for you.

I was watching a British home remodeling program, and I saw someone walk into a room, and they said, well, this is very homely.

And I was kind of surprised that they would say that about someone’s house, and I thought I’d misheard or that they were maybe a little rude.

And then after watching the show a few times, I realized that that’s what they say when they think a room looks kind of cozy and homey.

And so I was drawn to the idea of how could this be that the word homely means something completely opposite in the U.S. than it does in Britain?

Well, you’re exactly right.

You’ve noticed a difference in how we use the word homely, whether we’re on this side of the pond or the other one.

The word homely itself goes back to, gosh, the late 1300s, early 1400s.

And very, very early on, it just meant, as you suggested, belonging to a household or a home.

Very much like a place where you dwell.

And pretty soon, the meanings started diverging.

So you see in the U.K. that homely means something sort of like the word Hamish in English that’s adopted from Yiddish, meaning having to do with home.

And in this country, homely became a term that means more plain, something that’s just sort of ordinary, like you’d find in an ordinary household.

Exactly. And it’s not a positive thing that you would say about someone’s house.

No.

This room is so homely.

People would be completely insulted if you said that.

Right, right.

It’s dramatically different depending on which type of English you’re speaking, for sure.

Jenny, there was a moment there in the history of homely where the British had both meanings.

And actually, they did use homely for a while.

But once there was a semantic space collision, as we might call it in linguistics,

Where one word can be taken two ways that are positive or negative,

Then you often find coinages appear.

And it made a lot of sense for homie to be coined on the same basic principles

So that we didn’t have that semantic collision of the two meanings of homie.

By happenstance, the Americans kept homie, and homie is very distinct words.

And the British still have homie, but they never adopted homie.

So they don’t use the term homie at all. They just say homie.

No, but they might also use homely to mean plain in a kind of derogatory way.

You might say it of a really rude kind of crude structure or just the barest Spartan furnishings.

But it’s very context dependent, as you may have noticed.

Interesting.

Well, Jenny, we’re really glad you called.

Well, thank you for listening.

This has been fascinating trying to figure out what the roots of all this is.

Right.

Just one little word, right?

Yeah, one little word.

Thank you very much.

Okay.

Thanks for calling.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

Take care.

We probably should have pointed out that in the United States, homely, to mean plain

Of appearance or even ugly, is almost always used to refer to people or animals.

And we don’t nearly as often use it to refer to living spaces.

It’s kind of distanced itself further away from the idea of home.

Some people might say a homely person is one who should stay at home.

But you don’t describe a homely home.

Not usually, no.

And I think that’s because there’s a remnant of that discrepancy of homely meaning two different things left there in our understanding of the word.

Well, what word has caught your ear or eye?

Give us a call about it.

877-929-9673 or send it to us in email.

That address is words@waywordradio.org.

I did not know until I was reading Lynn Murphy’s book about the differences between American English and British English

That in Britain you often say Philadelphia to refer to…

Cream cheese.

Well, you knew that.

Yeah, I did know that.

Yeah.

But that’s interesting.

They’ve taken the brand name and made it generic.

Right.

That’s cool.

Right.

Another thing I learned from her book is the fact that Americans think of the British, I’ll say, WC for bathroom, for water closet, and they don’t.

And they haven’t for a really long time.

You may see it on the tank.

But that’s an archaism.

It’s just left over from the decades ago when they might have actually used it.

But it’s been a really long time.

877-929-9673.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Corey from Fort Worth.

Hi, Corey. Welcome.

What can we do for you?

You know, I’ve been noticing the word bougie being used in pop culture frequently,

And I’m familiar with the use of the word bourgeoisie as, like, Karl Marx would use it

Or as it was used in the late 1800s, early 1900s, as meaning upper class.

But it seems to me that the word bougie means something more, like, trashy or maybe drunk.

I’m wondering when that change happened and if you can talk more about that distinction.

Where do you see it used in that way?

I’ve seen it in music specifically and also in a couple of books.

Any particular books or any particular music?

Oh, I don’t remember the title specifically.

One of the reasons I wanted to kind of pin down the music in the books is because bougie has long been used in the United States in a variety of different contexts by a variety of different people.

But these days it’s very common, far more common among African-American English speakers than it is among other speakers.

Yeah, I’ve noticed that as well.

And you’re right, bougie, and it has a bunch of different spellings, but I think the one that I would use is B-O-U-G-I-E.

Bougie is short for bourgeois, and bourgeois basically means characteristic of the middle class,

Especially in terms of material possessions or trying to be showy about who you are and what you have, that sort of thing.

But bougie itself has kind of transformed a little bit, and it’s almost always derogatory.

Are you seeing bougie as derogatory?

Absolutely. Absolutely.

One of the slang dictionaries I checked, the Historical Dictionary of American Slang,

Has a really nice summary of what bougie means.

It says, offensively middle class, where you are taking on these trappings in such a way

That you are denying who you really are and putting on airs,

Kind of pretending to be a higher class than you truly are.

And you’ll find that again and again and again in the uses of bougie.

There’s an African-American linguist named Geneva Smitherman

Who has a couple books that include definitions of bougie.

One of her books is Black Talk, and the other is Word from the Mother Language.

And while the term isn’t exclusively Black English, I think her definitions are important here.

She says that bougie is an elitist, uppity-acting African-American person,

Also elitist Black event or style, negative term for those who identify with European American culture

And reject Blacks and Black culture.

So the summary of that, I would say, is bougie, if you are called bougie,

A lot of times people are saying you’re acting like you’re not one of the people that you actually

Are. You’re acting like you’re not one of us. You’re pretending to be part of the white mainstream

Culture when you’re not really. Interesting. Yeah. I think that answers my question pretty well.

Thank you. Okay. It fits with your experience of it. That’s pretty cool. Thanks for calling,

Corey. Really appreciate it. Yeah. Thank you very much. All right. Take care. Thanks, Corey. Yeah.

We want to hear from you. So call us 877-929-9673 or send your questions and stories about language

To words@waywordradio.org. You may have taken the wildly popular dialect quiz that ran in the

Online version of the New York Times a few years ago. The guy who gathered all the original data

For that is Bert Vox, and he’s a linguistics professor now at Cambridge University. And he’s

Doing some more research along those lines, and you can help him by answering his American dialect

Survey online. And so you can answer from 30 to 60 questions about whether you say miniature golf

Or putt-putt or whether you call those insects lightning bugs or fireflies, and you can help him

Build up a mega database of responses that will then be part of an app. How cool would that be?

That’s very cool.

So the site for that is dialectsofenglish.com,

And if you forget the name, you can always find it at our website, waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, this is Kaylee.

I’m calling from Fairbanks, Alaska.

Welcome to the show.

You sound like you’re right next door.

Yeah, you do. It’s a clear line.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah, not too far away.

What can we help you with?

Well, I have a question.

When I was in college, I spent a summer in Cameron, Ontario, which is kind of near Toronto,

At a sustainable organic farm.

It’s called Brush at House Farm.

And when I was working, they would always say,

Kaylee, you’re strong like ox, smart like street car.

And I never really gave it much thought.

But now I have two children.

And when they help me shovel all of our snow here in Fairbanks, Alaska,

I find myself saying, Izzy, you’re strong like ox.

And I just want to make sure that’s not offensive.

Was that a compliment?

I mean, you’re asking us if it’s a compliment, but I want to know how you took it when you first heard it.

When I first heard it, I thought it was a compliment.

I mean, I kind of just didn’t give it too much thought.

Originally, I thought it was just unique to them.

The first thing is people have been comparing other people to oxen and to bulls for a very long time, because that’s another variation, strong like bull.

And it’s particular, it’s the missing article in front of the noun that kind of catches your ear, right?

It’s not strong like an ox.

It’s strong like ox, right?

Right, yes.

The origin, as far as I know, of this becoming a popular term, although it existed before there, was a show called The Danny Thomas Show.

Before that had been called Make Room for Daddy.

And this was on in the United States in the 1950s.

And there’s a character on there by Hans Conrad called Uncle Tenus.

And Uncle Tenus is a very expressive, arms-filling, tall, thin, very characteristic face.

He’s got a wild hair and a loud manner.

And he’s just a character.

And he’s supposedly from Lebanon.

And one of the things that he says on the show as a catchphrase is, strong like bull.

And he says it in what’s supposed to be a Lebanese accent because his character’s Lebanese.

And they got that idea, by the way, because Danny Thomas was originally Lebanese.

His parents were Lebanese.

But in fact, he says it more of in a Germanic accent because Hans Conrad, the actor, his father was from Austria.

So that’s the source, I believe, of the popularization.

There’s an asterisk to put on this, which is that usually when the conversation comes up online, everyone swears from one end of the planet to the other that strong like bull or strong like ox comes from the Rocky and Bullwinkle show, which featured a couple of villains, Natasha and Boris, who spoke in these bad Russian accents.

However, I have not been able to find that phrase in that show.

And I have watched the episodes of the Danny Thomas show where Uncle Tanoose says the phrase in three different episodes.

So I know it’s on the Danny Thomas show.

I’ve just never seen it on the Rocky and Bullwinkle show.

Okay.

Well, I can’t remember seeing it on Rocky and Bullwinkle either.

And I sure watched it there.

And the other thing about it is the Danny Thomas show was on long before Rocky and Bullwinkle showed up.

But the cool thing is the actor who played Uncle Tanous on the Danny Thomas show, Hans Conrad, he also did one of the voices on the Rocky and Bullwinkle show.

So it is technically possible that he brought that catchphrase over to the cartoon, but it wouldn’t have been Natasha and Boris saying it because it was a different character.

Okay.

So very complicated.

And I have to mention it because everyone’s going to email us like it was absolutely Rocky and Bullwinkle.

My charge to you, if you think I was Rocky and Bullwinkle, is find me the episode.

Actually show me the video, and then I will believe it.

Okay, well, there’s my homework for after the show.

There you go.

So that’s the short version of it.

And so what about smart like streetcar?

That one I haven’t been able to nail down much more.

I do find some people say smart like tractor, smart like dump truck.

There’s a couple phrases in the military that make the rounds that are variations on that.

The interesting thing is that part isn’t a compliment, which is why I asked you at the top of the show if you took it as a compliment.

It means strong but dumb.

Because a streetcar or a dump truck or a tractor are not all that smart.

They’re just machines.

Right.

Yeah, they just work.

And now you’re passing it on to your kids?

Yeah.

So maybe I should just stick with the strong like ox.

Yeah.

Maybe not so much of the streetcar.

Well, thank you so much for this.

You’re welcome.

Kaley, good talking with you.

Yeah, great talking with you, too.

I really enjoyed your show.

Thanks for calling.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Yeah, bye.

We love talking about the expressions that have been passed down from generation to generation.

What are the ones that came down to you through your family?

Call us 877-929-9673 or send your stories about language to words@waywordradio.org.

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Listen to years of past episodes at waywordradio.org or find the show in any podcast app or on iTunes.

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We’d love to get your messages at words@waywordradio.org or hit us up on Twitter @wayword and look for us on Facebook.

This program would not be possible without you.

Grant and I are out to change the way we listen and think about language, and you’re making it happen.

Thanks also to senior producer Stefanie Levine, director and editor Tim Felten, director Colin Tedeschi, and production assistant Emma Kelman in San Diego.

In New York, we thank quiz guide John Chaneski, and that master of keeping it real, Paul Ruist at Argo Studios.

A Way with Words is an independent production of Wayword, Inc.

From the Recording Arts Center at Studio West in San Diego, I’m Martha Barnette.

And I’m Grant Barrett.

So long.

Bye-bye.

Thank you.