It pains me that while I think of Wisconsin as my beloved home, I wasn't born there. I picked up a lot of the language because I thought it was colorful and interesting, but I knew that the correct way to speak was what I learned in Detroit in my first nine years of life.

I learned the hard way that Southeast Wisconsin drinking fountains are "bubblers," because I went to the drinking fountain for a drink when the nun told us to stay away from the bubbler.

And yes, people would go "by" Shuster's Department Store, usually in the company of their many "cousants" (cousins), since there were lots of large Catholic families there.

And on the Souside (Southside) of Muhwahky (Milwaukee), they say people would go "down by Mitchell Street, where the streetcar turns the corner round."

And then there was the universal confirming interrogative, which sounds something like "Ay-na-hey?" It means "ain't that right?" or something like that. The answer, of course, is "You betcha."

-Joe-