cc  >> Ladies and gentlemen,  today we're here to have  Luanne von Schneidemesser--  I was going to say, tricky word,  "here today,"  as well as Julie Plier.  >> Plier.  >> Sorry, Plier.  It's been a rough start to today  so far.  We're going to take a look at  Wisconsin's ethnic vocabulary,  I guess is the way I'm going to  define it, and looking at how  different cultural groups have  influenced and enriched the  English language here in  Wisconsin.  So if you could please give a  round of applause to Julie and  Luanne.  We love to have them here.  [APPLAUSE]  I'm going to turn it on over,  ladies.  >> Thank you.  I'm Luanne and this is Julie. 

 We're both lexicographers and I  work for the Dictionary of  American Regional English so  you'll be seeing references to  that throughout our talk.  Julie got her training on the  Thorndike-Barnhart children's  dictionaries, if you remember  those.  Anybody my age probably had them  in school.  And since then she's been a  freelance lexicographer.  And it should be added, she also  works for the Historical  Society, she's a pronunciation  editor for children's textbooks.  Okay, we were both part of the  Wisconsin English Project in  2007/2008, and we're working,  just the two of us now, on a  Wisconsin words project.  So we'll be happy if you learn  something from us, but we'll be  even happier if we learn  something from you.  Words, words used in Wisconsin.  We're starting out with ethnic  terms that came along with some  of the settlers who came here.  And we will also be talking  about some of the terms that  came with Yankees, the English  speakers that came from the east  coast and places in between here  and the east coast. 

 And, well, there's a lot of ways  that words can get into a  language.  Words are constantly dying out.  At DARE, for example, we had  questions about what do you call  the horse that's closest to you  when you plow and what do you  call the other horse.  Near horse and far horse.  Even the people who knew the  terms couldn't get which one was  which.  [LAUGHTER]  So I'm sure by now it's  practically dead.  There are terms that have been  taken over from other parts of  the country.  In our DARE work we show that  enchilada and taco are regional  in the southwest.  Well, of course, that's all  changed with all the food  materials that have come up  throughout the country.  Some words are created as a need  rises. 

 For example, Google.  Tweet, now that's not a new word  but it's a new meaning to the  word.  One I heard just recently is the  Dracula sneeze, they're worried  about the swine flu so you're  supposed to sneeze into your  sleeve.  [LAUGHTER]  That's the Dracula sneeze.  And each word, as you can  probably guess, has its own  history, and we're just going to  talk about a few.  Here's a few words that we  consider to be Wisconsin words,  but note that words do not  follow state lines.  You can't say, whoops, there's  the border, nobody on the other  side of the border is going to  speak this way.  So most of the words we'll be  talking about are used beyond  Wisconsin, but the combination  of words we use makes us, or our  language, unique.  This is from an index by region  usage in etymology to the  Dictionary in American Regional  English, and these are some of  the terms that we have at the  beginning of the index for  Wisconsin.  And you notice that most of them  say something like chiefly  Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota  or north-north midland,  especially frequent in Wisconsin  for bubbler, surprise. 

 So this, by the way, is totally  on the Web now.  If you go to the DARE Web site,  DARE.wisc.edu, and look under  "index" you can see all the rest  of the words that they have in  Wisconsin.  The only thing you can't tell is  what they mean.  You have to look at the  dictionary to see what they  mean.  So common words like bubbler,  come with, go by, yeah hey  or once, like come here once,  budge, are some of the words we  think of as being Wisconsin  words.  And there are other words  referring to the culture of the  state like frozen tundra, Vince,  dare I say it, Brett,  cheesehead, shine, a fairly new  word is Sconnie.  You might have heard that.  We're not talking about most of  these but we're throwing in some  that you've probably never heard  of.  The main thrust of this is the  ethnic influence on Wisconsin.  This is the ethnic pattern  around 1940 and you can tell by  the, this color, that's the  German, that's the biggest  settlement area or biggest group  of settlers in the state. 

 The purple is Norwegian.  Most of that is in the west or  in the south.  We've got up around Green Bay,  we've got some Belgians up in  the north, way in the north if I  can find it.  Or there's Finns.  So from this list of  nationalities mentioned, you can  tell that we have a large range  of people who have settled in  this state.  Jim Leary, he's someone who  works on Wisconsin folklore,  once called it a map of Europe  superimposed on Wisconsin.  [LAUGHTER]  And when you see that, you can  almost see why he said that.  Okay, we'll start with the  biggest group.  And as you can tell from my  name, we'll actually it's my  husband's name, but we're part  of this German ancestry.  There's a few words that have  been taken into United States  English from German, and, as you  can see, there are Germans  everywhere but they tend to  congregate most heavily in the  southeast. 

 Scattered elsewhere.  So let's take for our first word  brat.  We have to do that, we're in  Wisconsin.  How many of you are native  Wisconsinites?  Wow!  Okay, how many of you are not?  Okay.  Julie is, I'm not.  I came here for grad school, and  I remember the first day I was  walking down State Street and I  saw this sign that said  Brat House.  [LAUGHTER]  And I thought, what kind of a  state is this that has a house  just for brats.  Well, I was coming from  Switzerland and I had been a  year in Germany and I spoke  German no problem, I'd never  seen it called brat, it had  always been bratwurst.  And it took me a while to figure  out what was going on.  Brat and bratwurst really  started in Wisconsin but with  Johnsonville now exporting to  every state in the union and  probably overseas, it's spread a  lot. 

 Sheepshead.  The wandering sheep, Sheepshead  Central.  Sheepshead Central is an  organization that started up as  a small Sheepshead club in  Milwaukee.  But the one I really like is if  you look on the Web you can find  a Web site for wandering sheep,  and that's for Sheepshead  players not in Wisconsin.  [LAUGHTER]  About four years ago, Brad Vogel  had an editorial in the  "Badger Herald" where he says  sheepshead is a uniquely  Wisconsin game.  And he goes on and talks about  some of the people who play the  game and some of the people who  are on this Web site or this  blog.  And one of the people ends with  the statement, I very well may  have been able to graduate in  less than six years if not for  all the sheeps I played in the  Rath.  I think Julie's husband was in  somewhat a similar situation.  Now you can see these are  kind of stylized maps.  We took the maps from the  Dictionary for American Regional  English. 

 And we did it by settlement,  history and population.  So if the whole map were colored  in black dots that would mean  everybody said that word.  Well, as you can see here,  Sheepshead is mostly a Wisconsin  term.  And Schafkopf, which is the  original German for it,  Sheepshead is just a translation  of Schafkopf, is also very, very  much a Wisconsin term.  Bakery.  My daughter went to, she grew up  here.  She went to school in Washington  state, and she called me one day  when she was an undergrad and  she said, mom, I just said let's  go by some bakery and they  laughed at me, what's wrong with  that?  Well, for us, or other people  who settled in German settlement  areas, a bakery can also be  baked goods, as you see on the  last line there.  At the bakery you buy bakery.  This slide is from Green Lake  where you can buy fresh bakery.  This is not said all over the  country. 

 I see a few looks of  astonishment.  No, it's not.  Believe me, most of the people  at her undergrad school had not  a clue.  Okay, from little on.  How many of you have ever had  said this?  Or from little up?  A few people.  Okay, I haven't heard that, the  last sentence here, both adults  and children when I was growing  up were given a bit of  information which seemed obvious  to them, they scoffed and said,  I have known that  from little on.  It's straight from the German  von wenig auf, just translated.  And we use terms like this and  don't even realize they've come  from somewhere else.  Especially when they're  translated and they don't have  the German, or whatever language  it is, connected with them.  There are various ways, as I  mentioned at the beginning, that  you can get a word into a  language and this is one of my  favorites. 

 My boss, Frederick Cassidy, at  the dictionary, he died several  years ago, but back in 1967 he  wrote an article and he was  talking about -- among other  things.  He loves folk etymologies.  Those are etymologies that you  think might be the reason for  this word being the way it is.  One of my favorites is  Sheboygan.  Do you know where Sheboygan came  from?  Have you heard this story?  Well, there was this Indian  chief, this is totally off the  point but anyway, there was an  Indian chief who had several  boys and his wife was expecting  another child so he came riding  up on his horse and asked the  woman who was holding the baby  in her hands, had just been  born, if he finally got a  daughter.  And she said, no, she-boy-gan.  So you know that's not true,  right?  [LAUGHTER]  That's what's called a folk  etymology.  There are probably a few people  in the world who believe that.  So let me just read you a short  passage from Cassidy about a  geese can.  One of my favorite folk  etymologies was reported by a  friend from a Wisconsin farm  where the language background  had been German but everyone had  now gone over to English. 

 The farmer was pouring water  from the spouted can for his  poultry when my friend asked,  what's that?  A geese can, replied the farmer.  Why do you call it that?  Because I use it to pour water  for the geese.  Of course, the actual source was  the German -- and giessen means  to pour so it's a watering can  or a pouring can.  But the farmer didn't know  German so he didn't know that  but, hey, "geese can" makes  perfect sense.  Okay, enough German.  Let's go on to Norwegian.  Wisconsin is home to the third  largest population of Norwegian  ancestry in the nation.  And up here you can see a map of  the whole United States, and you  can see that Minnesota has a  huge population.  The thing that should be noted  is this is absolute population  not percentage.  So large states like California  are going to have a lot of  things. 

 As you can see most of them are  in the north and in the south,  the people of Norwegian  ancestry.  Some of the words that appear in  Wisconsin actually, are listed  over there on your left on the  slide.  Krumkake being one of them.  This is a thin cookie baked in a  hinged iron and formed into a  cone or cylinder while still  warm.  Another one is lutefisk.  Now we thought maybe a lot of  you knew about lutefisk but have  never seen it or eaten it so  that's what the fish look like.  [LAUGHTER]  And something on that plate  is also lutefisk.  Personally, I kind of like the  lutefisk cook book part where it  says, take one lutefisk,  get rid of it.  [LAUGHTER]  How many of you have actually  had it?  Wow.  How many of you have had it more  than once?  [LAUGHTER]  Congratulations. 

 Okay.  Polish.  Wisconsin is home to the seventh  largest polish population.  You notice, again, mostly  Milwaukee area and then around  the Green Bay area but  especially heavily represented  in Wausau and Stevens Point  area.  This Polish buffet gives you a  lot of samples of what's known  in Wisconsin.  We've got kielbasa, that's duck  blood soup.  Sounds lovely.  And interestingly, and I know my  pronunciation of these is bad,  I haven't been around a lot of  Polish speakers.  Golabki is listed there,  it's stuffed cabbage.  Kaczki is listed as roast duck. 

 Czarnina and pierogi  are not defined there.  Also kielbasa and kapusta.  And one of the terms that you  might also be familiar with  is paczki.  This was in--  There's a big center around  Michigan by Detroit,  where they use these  on especially Shrove Tuesday.  Now you might look at this  doughnut up here and call it a  jelly doughnut or a Bismarck or  a Berliner, something like that.  That happens in Germany too,  actually, where they call it a  different name around right  before Lent, than they do the  rest of the year.  I don't know if that's true  here, but, in any case, this is  especially used right before  Lent starts.  Usually stuffed with plum if  you're original.  >> Yeah, in the Polish area.  >> Right. 

 Do you want to correct  my pronunciation?  >> No.  >> Okay.  >> Now we go to the Finnish.  And I hope most of you  did have your lunch or brought  it because we're going to keep  talking about food.  [LAUGHTER]  Wisconsin is home to the fifth  largest population of  Finnish ancestry in the nation.  The Finnish settled mainly in  northern Wisconsin along  Lake Superior.  Although Wisconsin has only the  fifth largest Finnish  population.  If you combine it with the  populations of northeastern  Minnesota and the upper  peninsula of Michigan you have  the largest concentration of  Finns in the country.  The word sisu is a word brought  to the US by the Finns and is  still used in the area.  This is, the sign up at the top  is for Little Finland which is  just outside Hurley. 

 And there's a good definition  here, it's kind of foggy, of  sisu, but it's the Finnish  character of strength and  perseverance.  Now, here we go with the food  again, I'm going to have trouble  saying these, I always do.  Another word the Finnish brought  with them when they settled in  Wisconsin is mojakka.  It's a soup or stew made from  fish and then it's called  kalamojakka, or from beef and  then it's called lihamojakka.  The really interesting thing  about this is that these are  words that are no longer  in common use in Finland.  The settlers brought them along  with them and they stopped using  them pretty much in Finland but  are still using them in this  country.  And there is actually a whole  Web site devoted to mojakka,  I can't say it.  [LAUGHS]  Wisconsin is home to the second  largest population of Belgian  ancestry in the nation.  And one of the particular--  Belgians are the group that most  particularly influenced Door,  southern Brown and northern  Kewaunee counties in food.  Three of the foods are jutt,  which is cooked cabbage and  potatoes seasoned with brown  butter, pepper, salt and nutmeg,  and trippes are the second one  here. 

 They're pork sausages made with  cabbage and seasonings.  And trippes look a lot like  bratwurst, I didn't put a  picture up here, and apparently  also taste a lot like bratwurst.  Luanne and I brought some back  from Door County to sample.  She put them in her freezer, she  went looking for them and they  were gone.  And her husband had taken them  and grilled them up with  bratwurst, served them to  friends, they didn't know they  weren't eating bratwurst.  And the third is kneecaps.  I got this picture from  the Swan Club in De Pere  around St. Patrick's Day.  So they have green whip cream  on the top of them.  But they're a fried cake  sprinkled with sugar with a  dollop of whip cream on the top.  Now booyah is probably the most  well known of the Belgian foods. 

 It's a thick soup or stew  traditionally simmered over a  wood fire in a large drum and  stirred with a canoe paddle.  It typically includes stewing  chicken, ox tail, beef stew  meat, cabbage, potatoes and  assorted vegetables.  And it's served a lot at  festivals and I've had it.  I grew up in Green Bay and we  always went to booyah festivals.  And there it is.  I don't see the canoe paddle but  it's being cooked in a large  pot.  And now we're going to get away  from food finally.  And also away from the terms  that were influenced by various  ethnic groups.  And the first one we're going to  go to is the word supper club.  We're still on the subject of  food but this time it's where  you eat it. 

 Other states have supper clubs,  so the word itself is not  unique to Wisconsin.  In New York, for example,  they're more like night clubs.  And in other states, as in the  south mentioned in the next  slide, they're true clubs with  membership fees.  But Wisconsin supper clubs are  entirely different.  A real Wisconsin supper club has  fish on Friday night, prime rib  on Saturday, is never open for  lunch.  It has cloth napkins,  waitresses, never waiters,  and sensible shoes.  [LAUGHTER]  Relish trays, cracker baskets  and a salad bar.  The salad bar must contain these  items: Cheese spread, three-bean  salad, pickled beets and those  crinkled cut carrots in French  dressing.  Jell-O is a vegetable.  [LAUGHTER]  Now this is a term that  goes back to my childhood  in Door County. 

 It's a word my cousin and  I thought my uncle,  her grandfather, had made up.  However, she and I were talking  about it and my husband walked  up and said, I know that word.  And it just happened at the time  there was, my cousin had a  friend who was someone I went to  high school with who was sitting  there and said, I know that  word.  They both went to a YMCA camp in  northeastern Wisconsin run by  the Green Bay YMCA.  We all know it as a nighttime  skinny dip.  And it wasn't an easy one to  find Googling but I did find  this and this is actually from  the upper peninsula of Michigan.  The Portage canal that's being  talked about is the canal across  the Keweenaw Peninsula.  And certainly sounds like the  same thing to me.  And since I found this, Luanne  and I have found two more in  Door County.  One was from an 80-year-old man  who at first said he didn't know  it, then recalled that it had  something to do with  naked on the beach. 

 [LAUGHTER]  So apparently he did know it,  just wasn't sure of the exact  meaning.  And then we've also gotten one  from a Madison native who can't  recall where she first heard it  but she also went to summer camp  in northeastern Wisconsin.  Does anybody here know the term?  Oh, okay.  You look like you're over 60,  right?  [INAUDIBLE]  [LAUGHTER]  >> Where are you from?  >> Madison.  >> Oh, okay, you're from  Madison.  >> I grew up in northwestern  Wisconsin.  >> Northwestern Wisconsin.  That's interesting.  That's interesting.  But I asked you if you're over  60, because we have found no one  who has ever heard of that who  is under the age of 60. 

 So this might be age related.  >> I remember it from Green Bay  in a boy scout camp.  >> Another camp.  [INAUDIBLE]  I'd like to talk to you  afterward.  >> What about skinny dip?  >> Skinny dip is very common.  So now, let's see, here's one  more Door County.  [LAUGHTER]  Lawyers.  [LAUGHTER]  You read very  quickly.  [LAUGHTER]  Apparently, they're delicious.  I've never tried one. 

 But it's Washington Island and  from what I understand  also upper peninsula calls them.  They're a fresh water cod.  >> And that's the restaurant on  Washington Island.  >> Yes, that's the restaurant on  Washington Island.  You're right, you recognize it.  So I was going to have you read  it while Luanne came back up  here but you've already read it.  >> Is that supposed to be...  [INAUDIBLE]  >> No, that's one of the things  we asked about in Door County  and some of the people  said burbo,  and the others said burbot.  And each one of them was sure  that they were right.  >> But it is a freshwater cod. 

 >> Right.  Actually DARE has this going  back to 1847 and that particular  quote is from upstate New York.  And I love the quote.  It says, that is a species of  ling, we call it in these parts  a lawyer.  Notice I'm not from Wisconsin  I say "lah-yer" not "loy-yer."  A lawyer, I said, why, pray?  I don't know unless it's because  he ain't of much use and is as  slippery as fish that swims.  [LAUGHTER]  I hope we're not insulting  anyone here.  [LAUGHTER]  Okay, here's one you've probably  never heard of unless you're  in the tobacco trade.  Do you know this?  >> Oh, yeah.  >> Very good.  This is a term we've found only  in Wisconsin. 

 Case weather, it's used in the  Wisconsin tobacco industry.  Foggy weather that moistens the  tobacco hanging in the sheds and  makes it fit for handling and  removal.  So it was said to be in case  in this situation.  It's a warm spell in the winter,  usually, during which tobacco  leaves soften enough to be  handled without breaking.  >> Like recently?  >> Pardon?  >> Like recently.  >> Like recently, that's right.  There's a citation from 1920  from the "Capital Times" talking  about case weather at Stoughton.  Okay, this is one you probably  know.  DARE has this going back to 1919  and defines it as a stupid  awkward person.  Now we have to say that those  citations are not from  Wisconsin. 

 For those of us in Wisconsin, it  can be a Packer fan, it can be a  native Wisconsinite or it can be  a triangular piece of foam  that's on those guys heads.  I think the main meaning for us  is a person who lives in  Wisconsin.  But, as far as we can tell, this  was originally a pejorative  term, and it was used by people  outside the state to talk about  Wisconsinites in a negative way.  Well, of course, we just took it  and ran with it.  So we can laugh at ourselves.  Now is this known nationwide?  Yes, I believe it is because it  you remember back in 1995, there  was a plane crash, two people  were going back to Superior and  there was a plane crash and one  of them had a cheesehead hat  behind him so he grabbed it, put  it on and supposedly it saved  him from injuries.  And after that there was a run  on those cheesehead hats.  [LAUGHTER]  So the rest of the world  knows about them.  >> I'm quite certain that the  cheesehead was first used to  describe not Packer fans but  Milwaukee baseball fans by  Chicago White Sox baseball fans  way back in the late '70s,  early '80s when that was a very  intense rivalry.  I'm quite certain of that  because I'm a big sports fan and  following Wisconsin teams for a  long time. 

 >> Great, thank you.  Okay, golden birthday.  How many of you know this term?  Almost everybody.  I have to say, the first time I  heard it I didn't have a clue  what it meant.  It is, for those few who might  not know it, like if you were  born on the 21st of a month  your golden birthday would be  your 21st birthday.  If you were unlucky enough to be  born on the first of the month,  your golden birthday is when  you're one.  But you know really I have never  figured out exactly what it  means to have a golden birthday.  There's no special party or  anything else as far as I know.  In any case, it's now beyond  Wisconsin.  We now have evidence from  Minnesota, the UP, Indiana,  Iowa, even Ohio. 

 This might have something to do  with the fact that Hallmark  cards now has a birthday card  for this.  [LAUGHTER]  No, I doubt if that's the only  reason but obviously it's...  [INAUDIBLE]  >> Really?  >> Yeah.  >> My German husband doesn't.  >> Well, she was 30 years old  when she came over here.  >> Okay, I'll see if I can  follow up on that.  Thank you.  >> Don't you also have the year  with the numbers?  >> No.  Because some people would never  have a golden birthday, would  they?  Okay.  Of course we can't stop. 

 We're going to finish here  shortly so you can have a chance  for questions or so you can tell  us things, but we can't stop  without talking about a bubbler.  This, by the way,  is one of the editors at DARE.  And what you see behind him are  the questionnaires we did  between 1965 and '70.  There are 1,002 of them and they  have something like 1600  questions a piece.  Yes?  >> Just to comment, I have that  shirt and everywhere I wear it,  it gets noticed.  >> And we have a couple of  shirts over here.  There's one for bubbler and  there's one for cheese curds and  they're squeaky.  And you can buy them here at the  gift shop.  They are sold by the Wisconsin  Historical Society.  And do you want to hold up that  mug?  Can you hold up the squeaky  cheese mug?  And you also can buy mugs. 

 And they have, I think,  refrigerator magnets and a few  other things.  So yes, it's a very nice t-shirt  and usually you will hear  comments on it, especially if  you're not in Wisconsin.  >> Especially when you turn your  back.  >> Right.  And this is what's on the back  of it.  [LAUGHTER]  Okay, now I hate to disillusion  you, but we're not the only  people who use the term bubbler.  It's also used in a part of  Massachusetts around Boston.  We think that the origin of it  was the Kohler Company.  Back in around 1915, they're  marketing area is basically  where people say bubbler.  The bubbler was developed in  1885 by, at that time it was  called, Kohler Waterworks, and  it was one of the ones  that stuck straight up. 

 It had a spout up and the water  shot out about this far and then  it bubbled back down on itself.  The arced, as this is, water  fountain, drinking fountain or  bubbler, came along later.  And it's very interesting  because if you see maps of where  this is used, mostly it's in  southeastern Wisconsin but even  when Julie and I were up in the  Superior area and gave a talk,  the people up there, oh,  bubbler, that's the first  Wisconsin word they named.  In spite of the fact that when  you pin them down, a lot of them  don't use it.  But it's like we know this,  we're Wisconsinites.  Even if it's not used by  everyone all over the state.  Okay, there's the, you can see  southeastern Wisconsin, right?  And the Boston area.  This was a dialect survey of  about eight years ago that was  on the Web, it was filled out  by people on the Web.  Okay, there are a lot more words  we could talk about but we're  kind of running out of time on  this.  So we had to pick and choose. 

 I hope you learned a few new  words and I hope you saw a few  familiar old friends and we'll  open it up for questions.