Learning to speak Wisconsin

The first thing you learn when you move to a new place is that while you may think that most people in the United States all speak the same English, you are dead wrong. I was born and raised in the American south by a northern mother. I was educated, for the most part, in North Carolina, where I learned that people can be suspicious of those not from the south. I adapted by adopting a bit of an accent and learned to say things like "bless your heart." But most of the time I understood what people were saying to me.

That is, until I moved to Wisconsin, where for a while I assumed that some people used a bit of pidgin German.

"Do you want this in a bayg?"
"Excuse me?"
Person holds up a bag.
"Oh, you mean a BAG."

Person looks at me like I'm stupid. I explain I'm from the south. What I don't say is that in the south, some people may add an extra syllable to "pen," but we don't add a "y" to bag so it now rhymes with "vague." Also, we understand that you don't know what we're talking about half the time, but we like to use props. That's why we hold up the pen.

I just read that part back and realized it sounded snarky. I didn't mean for it to sound snarky. Really, once I stopped being confused I found it kind of charming. I used to work in a store, and I pronounced "bag" somewhere in between "bag" and "bague," so as not to confuse people. I thought of it kind of like learning to speak Wisconsin. Once.

That's another bit of Wisconsin lingo. You do something once, even if you're going to do it more that once. "Let's go look at the brown shoes once." I don't know why. It's just kind of . . . musical.

But after walking around for a little while feeling like an outsider, I embraced it. Part of it had to do with the Sausage Guy (and no, it's not dirty, and yes, it's another post) and another part of it had to do with enjoying the little bit of Americana I was really getting to see. I was never going to be a native Wisconsiner (Wisconsonite? Wisco?) but I could always just enjoy being transplanted.

For now.