Last night I had a fun Facebook exchange with my friend Dick
Alpert, erstwhile morning host on WIBA-AM in Madison who now masterfully
handles traffic reporting duties for the all the Clear Channel radio stations
in Wisconsin, from their Milwaukee hub.
Dick is from Sheboygan, but you couldn’t tell from hearing him
speak. Like most broadcasters, Dick has
that neutral diction that sounds the same all across America.
The exchange started when Dick posted that he had heard
someone on the police scanner say “Highway One Hundred” – which is one of the
many main thoroughfares in the Milwaukee metro area. The reason for his post is that those of us
who have been around the state for a while know that people in Milwaukee –
which, by the way, is usually pronounced with two run-on syllables - mwokee –by
the natives, invariably say “Hiway a hunnert”.
Not “Hiway one hundred”, but “Hiway a hunnert”.
That post kicked off a sting of follow-up comments from
folks who appreciate the true Wisconsin accent, as heard in communities like
Milwaukee, Sheboygan, the “holy land” between Lake Winnebago and Lake Michigan,
and pretty much everywhere above HiWay 8.
Part of this unique regional speech is characterized by a
more “German” syntax, where you hang the vowel on the end of the sentence; part
of it is reflected in the “th” sound being replaced with a “d” – as in
dese/these, dem/them, does/those, and so on.
And a part of it is unique articles which ‘sconnies innately understand –
like “inso”, which I believe is a contraction of “isn’t it so?”, which you
would hear in any conversation, like “dem Packers really are playin’ good now,
inso?”
And, of course, you have to drop your g’s to speak proper ‘sconnie
. It’s “playin”, not “playing”. And the popular new nickname for
Wisconsinites – ‘sconnie – comes from the way so many people who live here
pronounce the name of the state: ‘sconsin.
The area around Sheboygan and the holy land (the communities
of St. Anne, St. Nazianz, Holy Cross, etc. in Calumet, Manitowoc, and Sheboygan
Counties) speaks an intensely pure form of ‘sconnie, and to navigate the area,
you’ll need to know things like to those folks, a cook-out is a fry-out (they
have frequent brat-fry events), a barbeque sandwich is a hot tomale, and scores
of other terms which are really not part of mainstream ‘sconsin speech.
For years, I worked with a young woman from Hilbert, who had
learned to adapt her speech to the neutral broadcast inflection, but hearing
her on the phone speaking with a friend from back home, she’d slip into the
native tongue, and say things like “Yah, den, I gotta work Friday ‘till five,
but den I’m comin’ back over by yous for dat big brat fry dere havin’ by Johnny’s
ma’s place, ya know, so you guys should meet me dere, inso? Yah, den, we’re gonna get all loopy, inso?”
You don’t go over to someone’s house; you go over by their
house. “Yah, hey, I heard Jim is stayin’
by Frank’s place fer a while – guess da old lady got fed up wit his drinkin’
and carryin’ on, and went to work and trew him outta da house. He says ta her, he says, dat was just da
Leinie’s talkin’ da udder night when I come home and called ya a bitch, but she
din’t buy dat story, so out on the street he went.” (Notice how the past tense
verb is hung onto the end of the dependent clause.)
If you can follow that long sentence in the paragraph above,
you know that “went to work” doesn’t mean “went to work”, but that it’s just a
common filler phrase indicating any sort of action, such as “went to work and
bought another round for da whole bar, yet”.
And no one in the Badger state calls it Leinenkugel’s; it’s Leinies.
Verbally indicating agreement with a friend during normal
conversation might sound something like “Yah, too yet, once, I’m da same way,
inso”.
Please don’t think this post is meant to belittle or make
fun of the hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Wisconsinites who speak
this unusual language. I thoroughly
enjoy hearing it, just like I enjoy hearing a good Minnesota accent, or a good
Canadian accent – although “accent” doesn’t really do it justice. It’s really another dialect, and part of what
gives us character – inso?
