Week 2

So this week I was told to go to this website and write about what I found.

The link is to the Lifestyle and Features Blogs section of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel website called "Words to the Wise."

While I found many intriguing blog entries that I could easily write about, the one in particular that I chose was the blog titled "You know you are from Wisconsin when..." by Kathy Schenck. In this entry, Schenck writes about how being from Wisconsin led her to misinterpret the following facebook status update: Craig just wrote a scene involving, among other things, a brat on an airplane.

As a Wisconsin citizen for 20 years, Schenck thought Craig meant brat as in short for bratwurst, the sausage that made Milwaukee famous, instead of brat as in an annoying, whiny child. She then goes on to reference other Wisconsin-isms like calling water fountains "bubblers."


I can somewhat relate to Schenck's "brat" misunderstanding, as the first few days of my freshman year here at the University of Illinois I found myself constantly defending my so-called southern accent to everyone I met (all of whom were of course from Chicago or the suburbs).

My argument was always the same: I may be from south of Champaign, but only about an hour south, meaning I am not from "the south," I am from central Illinois.
After much attention was brought to the way I talk, I admitted to the fact that maybe I pronounced the name "Jen" more like "gin" and maybe when I said the number "ten" it sounded more like "tin."

Even though I somewhat compromised on the accent debate by admitting to the flaws in my speech that I had never noticed before, I couldn't manage to convince my new Chicago friends that they seem to put a hard 'a' sound where o's should be. (Which they totally do).


My most comparable "brat" situation occurred early freshman year as I was sitting in my dorm cafeteria with a bunch of boys from my floor. I was telling them the story about why this girl and I didn't really get along, and I simply stated that I had caught her mouthing me once at a party. They all immediately started cracking up. I didn't understand.

The boys seemed to think what I had said sounded dirty, so I quickly explained that I meant she had been mouthing me as in talking bad about me.

"Oh, so like bad-mouthing, you mean?"

I had never really realized that where I'm from, in central Illinois, we've dropped the "bad" from the phrase "bad mouthing." And I had definitely never considered that without the "bad" it could possible sound dirty to the non-Taylorville ear; Not until my embarrassing moment at the lunch table that day, at least.


In the two and a half years following the "mouthing" episode at lunch, I now definitely make sure to say "bad mouthing" instead of mouthing, and I have also trained myself to properly pronounce 'Jen' and 'ten'-sounding words.


And I'll admit that now when I go home and my girlfriends are gossiping about who was mouthing who, I chuckle to myself.


Until next week,
Candace