BS: the pronunciation of bayou

Subject: BS: the pronunciation of bayou
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 25 Oct 05 - 12:27 AM

Do you live in a part of the world that has bayous? or, I suppose, bayoux? If so, how do you pronounce the word?

What are the bayous like?

Subject: RE: BS: the pronunciation of bayou
From: Paul Burke
Date: 25 Oct 05 - 03:33 AM

According to Wiki it's something like "Better by you, better than me".
We don't have many in Derbyshire, nor many catfish.

A bayou.

Subject: RE: BS: the pronunciation of bayou
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 25 Oct 05 - 03:41 AM

Wikipedia bayous

Rather brief, but a fair summary.

In my area, pronunciation is "BUY you," but people where there are some may do it otherly. Around here we just call them swamps or mudholes, but then we don't have many to talk about.

John

Subject: RE: BS: the pronunciation of bayou
From: Elmer Fudd
Date: 25 Oct 05 - 04:27 AM

Sign on a local Cajun restaurant: "How's Bayou?"

Subject: RE: BS: the pronunciation of bayou
From: Cluin
Date: 25 Oct 05 - 04:30 AM

Whenever our band Blarney performs the song "Come By the Hills", our bass player follows it up with, "They're very reasonably priced and in a good location."

Bass players....

Subject: RE: BS: the pronunciation of bayou
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 25 Oct 05 - 05:31 AM

Interchangeably with banjo/bass players:

There are only two good jokes about ******, the rest of them are all true.

John

Subject: RE: BS: the pronunciation of bayou
From: Crystal
Date: 25 Oct 05 - 06:01 AM

I say "buy ooo" but I'm English.

Subject: RE: BS: the pronunciation of bayou
From: greg stephens
Date: 25 Oct 05 - 07:31 AM

Hank Williams said it a bit more like by-yo but then he's not from Louisiana either.

Subject: RE: BS: the pronunciation of bayou
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 25 Oct 05 - 10:51 AM

Still waiting for word from someone who lives where bayous occur in the wild.

I got interested because I just visited the bootheel of SE Missouri, where perfectly round islands of trees occur in the fields. Years ago someone told me they were bayous,but I wonder how they formed. I also can't remember how she pronounced it.

Subject: RE: BS: the pronunciation of bayou
From: Ebbie
Date: 25 Oct 05 - 11:15 AM

Which one you gonna believe: Olivia St. John (Australia) Blue Bayou or Hank Williams (Alabama)Jambalaya?

That said, I don't know either.

Subject: RE: BS: the pronunciation of bayou
From: greg stephens
Date: 25 Oct 05 - 11:30 AM

Well, enough of all this theorising. I just put on a very excellent record of the Boat Band performing "Bayou Teche Waltz", the vocal sung by JC Gallow, the black creole musician from Mamou,Louisiana. His pronunciation is approximately ba-you, with the "ba" intermediate between the "ba" of standard English back, and the longer a of a sheep going "bah". However, this "a" sound is only the start of a diphthong which changes to the short "i" of "in" before the "y" of "you". Broadly speaking, if you said ba-i.you very fast you'd have it. Mind you, that's black Mamou pronunciation. Who knows what a white cajun would say in Church Point?
   
The record is "Back Deck Blues" by the Boat Band, a double CD, extremely good value, and available from Harbourtown Records or any good shop.HARCD 036.

Subject: RE: BS: the pronunciation of bayou
From: Ebbie
Date: 25 Oct 05 - 12:04 PM

Mind you, in the interests of song and rhyme, I have heard native born Louisianans pronounce the town's name as New Orleeeens. And that is not what they say in course of conversation, where it is N'awlins (if you are strict) or NooOrlinns.

Where is PoppaGator?

Subject: RE: BS: the pronunciation of bayou
From: DougR
Date: 25 Oct 05 - 02:10 PM

I lived in Beaumont, Texas, for a few years (across the line from Louisiana) and we had bayous which we pronounced by-yous. Guess it's the same in Kansas, but doubt they have many bayous.

DougR

Subject: RE: BS: the pronunciation of bayou
From: jeffp
Date: 25 Oct 05 - 02:24 PM

The American Heritage Dictionary lists 2 pronuciations. The first one is bi'-oo (long i, long oo). The second is bi'-o (long i, long o). From Louisiana French bayouque, bayou, possibly from Choctaw bayuk

Subject: RE: BS: the pronunciation of bayou
From: Janie
Date: 25 Oct 05 - 02:27 PM

Again--not from bayou country--but I have always pronounced it buy-you. Hammock is what most would call areas of relatively high tree covered ground surrounded by low ground, marsh or swamp. So there might be a number of hammocks in a bayou but no bayous in a hammock. I have never before heard of the high ground being call a bayou. Clear as swamp gas?

The higher ground in the Florida Keys, the Everglades and North Carolina coastal swamps are all referred to locally as hammocks. They generally stay above water level, even during high tide.

I also have always assumed that buy-you is singular and buy-youx is plural. But don't really have a clue.

Janie

Subject: RE: BS: the pronunciation of bayou
From: GUEST,Les B.
Date: 25 Oct 05 - 02:47 PM

A group of musicians in my area, who play Cajun on demand, call their
little band "Bayou Herbert" (buy you a beer)!

Subject: RE: BS: the pronunciation of bayou
From: GUEST,Les B.
Date: 25 Oct 05 - 02:48 PM

Actually that's probably Bayou Hebert !

Subject: RE: BS: the pronunciation of bayou
From: leftydee
Date: 25 Oct 05 - 07:30 PM

Elmer Fudd...... do you live near Ferndale?

Subject: RE: BS: the pronunciation of bayou
From: GUEST,Chief Chaos
Date: 26 Oct 05 - 02:00 PM

All my cajun friends say by-yous. But what a bayou is might surprise you. They use the term to cover just about any open/forested freshwater passage that is bigger than a ditch and smaller than a river.

Subject: RE: BS: the pronunciation of bayou
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 26 Oct 05 - 03:51 PM

Sort of a billabong then?

Subject: RE: BS: the pronunciation of bayou
From: Elmer Fudd
Date: 26 Oct 05 - 04:08 PM

Leftydee: Nuh-uh. Do they have a Cajun restaurant with a sign like that in Ferndale too? Or a certain wascally wabbit I've been hankering to skewer? Or some cute chicks who dig short fat bald men?

Elmer

Subject: RE: BS: the pronunciation of bayou
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 26 Oct 05 - 10:53 PM

Chief Chaos, I know what you mean. One of my favorite memories is of taking our wooden rowboat down some bayous near Houma, Louisiana. These were narrow canals through the wetlands, sometimes no wider than our oars. We saw cypresses hung with Spanish moss, irises growing out of mats of vegetation, and a big owl in a cypress tree. Once I was trying to take a picture of a flower and a hummingbird flew right into view. I didn't get its picture - it disappeared too quickly.

As for What's-her-name's song about the Blue Bayou, I have always thought it was so corny. I come from the Great Lakes area, and I happen to know that "fishing boats with their sails afloat" would be a truly pathetic sight.

Subject: RE: BS: the pronunciation of bayou
From: Bert
Date: 27 Oct 05 - 12:01 AM

Listen to Hank Williams singing Jambalaya and take this out of the BS section.

Crystal has it about as close as you can get.

Subject: RE: BS: the pronunciation of bayou
From: Cluin
Date: 27 Oct 05 - 12:03 AM

Ebbie: Which one you gonna believe: Olivia St. John (Australia) Blue Bayou or Hank Williams (Alabama)Jambalaya? That said, I don't know either.


Other stuff you don't know:
It's Olivia Newton John that's the singer from Oz.

But she wasn't the one who recorded Blue Bayou; it was Linda Ronstadt... (though it was originally a Roy Orbison song).

Subject: RE: BS: the pronunciation of bayou
From: Cluin
Date: 27 Oct 05 - 12:04 AM

Sorry, Eb, but what did you expect? This is primarily a music MB.

Subject: RE: BS: the pronunciation of bayou
From: Bee-dubya-ell
Date: 27 Oct 05 - 01:02 AM

What are called bayous here in northwest Florida (where we pronounce the word "by-you") would be called creeks or small rivers elsewhere. The word doesn't have the "swamp" meaning that it does in Louisiana. We call our swamps "swamps".

Whether a body of water gets called a bayou or a river/creek seems to depend on how long it is. Bayous run only a few miles before emptying into a bay while rivers and creeks run many miles.

Subject: RE: BS: the pronunciation of bayou
From: leftydee
Date: 27 Oct 05 - 08:24 AM

Elmer Fudd, There's a restaurant (cajun) in Ferndale , Michigan called Howe's Bayou. I just thought you might be a neighbor. And......Ferndale is a very progressive, open minded town I'm sure there may be a lady for you. I'm a short fat man and have been married to a gem for 37 years. Very few wabbits though

Subject: RE: BS: the pronunciation of bayou
From: Ebbie
Date: 27 Oct 05 - 11:09 AM

You're so right, Cluin. There are lots of things I don't know and much of what I did know is forgotten, in the interests of making room for more information. Not that that bothers me- with age (and wisdom) one is no longer as afraid of mistakes. *G*

Subject: RE: BS: the pronunciation of bayou
From: GUEST,Chief Chaos
Date: 27 Oct 05 - 02:55 PM

I lived along Teche (Tesh)(local native american dialect for snake) Bayou in Patterson, LA. I don't think length has much to do with it, at least in Louisiana. Some like the Teche run for 30 miles. There are several that go through three or four name changes through the different parishes (parishes are the equivalent of counties). The worst thing about most of them is that they look so much alike that it's very easy to get lost.

Subject: RE: BS: the pronunciation of bayou
From: Cluin
Date: 01 Nov 05 - 01:13 AM

Wish I could do a defrag of my brain sometimes, Ebbie. ;)

I've lost count of times my girlfriend has turned to me and asked, "Why would you even know something like that?" She likes having me around when sh'es doing the crossword though (among other things).

Subject: RE: BS: the pronunciation of bayou
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 01 Nov 05 - 10:38 AM

This is getting me in the mood to do some Louisiana cooking. The Joy of Cooking has three recipes fro Jambalaya, including vegetable ("ideal for a picnic supper").

Makes me wonder what kind of picnics they had.

The next recipe calls for diced cooked ham, chicken, sausage, tongue, shrimp, crab etc, alone or in combination. Aha! Jambalaya must be Cajun French for "leftovers"!

Subject: RE: BS: the pronunciation of bayou
From: GUEST,Scoville on lunch break
Date: 01 Nov 05 - 03:08 PM

BYE-yoe. Somewhere in between a swamp and a creek (or river--the ones around here are pretty big).

But Houston is a big city and a lot of people are from somewhere else, myself included, so there are zillions of different pronunciations.

My neighbor, when we moved here, asked how we pronounced it in Colorado (we moved from Denver). We said, "We don't, because it's dry."

Subject: RE: BS: the pronunciation of bayou
From: GUEST,pattyClink
Date: 02 Nov 05 - 08:13 AM

What makes a bayou is that it is a distributary, not a tributary. Way upstream all the little creeks feed into rivers and into the Big river, these are tributaries.

Downstream, there is so much water to get to the sea that some of it breaks out into birdsfoot shaped networks of smaller streams called distributaries. These are bayous. Some are big, some smaller.

These things are very gentle in their grade and tend to lay sediment down rather than scour it out. This why our channelling the Mississippi and generally jacking with it is one of the interrelated causes of coastal erosion in Louisiana. There is no longer the volume of sediiment being laid down in the bayous to compensate for coastal and other erosional forces and we get a net loss of land.