Massachusetts Daily Collegian

A free and responsible press serving the UMass community since 1890

A free and responsible press serving the UMass community since 1890

Massachusetts Daily Collegian

A free and responsible press serving the UMass community since 1890

Massachusetts Daily Collegian

‘Bubbler’ versus ‘water fountain’

Be proud of your dialect
Judith+Gibson-Okunieff%2FCollegian
Judith Gibson-Okunieff/Collegian

I’d never heard of a bubbler before I came to the University of Massachusetts. In New Jersey, we say water fountain. There’s no debate whatsoever. So when someone down the hall from me said “I like it here, it’s pretty nice we have a bubbler right around the corner too,” naturally, this Jersey boy was bewildered. A bubbler? I had walked around that corner a couple dozen times at this point and I never saw anything producing bubbles. All I saw was a storage closet and a water fountain. In my state of confusion I asked, “What do you mean by bubbler?”

From that point on, I had entered enlightenment; in eastern Massachusetts people call a water fountain a “bubbler.” I knew that people in eastern Massachusetts spoke with a Boston accent, just a different way of saying the same words I do with my accent, but how had I never heard of this strange, alternate word for water fountain? My neighbors from the Boston area seemed perplexed that I said water fountain and roundabout, whereas I was mystified by their use of bubbler and rotary, despite our growing up just four hours apart.

Those who say bubbler are proud of it, and not afraid to defend it – it’s an icon of the Boston accent. However, the word bubbler is not native to the Bay State. There are two regions in the United States that say bubbler: eastern Wisconsin and eastern Massachusetts, most residents unaware of the other region’s usage, and both claiming ownership of the term. So why do these two places 1,000 miles apart proudly use this word no one else in the country seems to know?

Bert Vaux has a PhD in phonology and taught dialects of English at Harvard University and is the co-creator of the Harvard Dialect Survey. The survey has been turned into a quiz on The New York Times website that can tell where you live by the words you use, and how you say them. In an interview I conducted with Vaux, he suggested, “With bubbler, it appears that the term (and indeed the object itself) was able to spread from its point of origin in Wisconsin all the way eastward across what we call the Northern cultural region to its other extreme in the Boston area.”

The first uses of “bubbler” were found in one room schoolhouses in Wisconsin around 1900 referring to a ceramic water cooler made by the Red Wing Company. It was considered new and exciting technology for its time, as opposed to the prior technology: a shared metal cup. It wasn’t until the 1920s that the Kohler Company would mass-produce a bubbler similar to those of today. Over time, the invention, and the word for it, made its way east through the states between Wisconsin and Massachusetts, and eventually all the way to Boston. So, at some point people were probably saying bubbler in Pennsylvania, Ohio and other states in that area. Vaux continued, “In this particular case, the competing terms ‘water fountain’ and ‘drinking fountain’ ended up spreading into most of the North, leaving only the starting and ending points of the ‘bubbler’ trail as linguistic islands.”

Though it may not feel like it, American dialects today are more unique than ever. The American linguist William Labov said in an NPR interview that “the regional dialects of this country are getting more and more different, so that people in Buffalo, St. Louis and Los Angeles are now speaking much more differently from each other than they ever did.” The nuanced vowel pronunciations and subtle word variations between dialects represents the end result for the millions of unconscious choices our ancestors made.

Joe Pater, a phonologist at UMass, spoke with me about dialects. “One word winning out over another essentially comes down to random chance. One thing we do know about how words exist in language is that they compete with one another. You and I don’t want to have multiple words for the same thing, or any words that are too ambiguous, so there’s this competitive pressure for certain words to beat out others, all happening unconsciously through conversation.”

There’s no reason for why people in New Hampshire say “soda” and people in Minnesota say “pop.” It was mostly just up to chance that one word came to prominence in a certain area.

Though my New Jersey roots will never allow me to confidently refer to one of those H2O flingers as a “bubbler,” I urge Massachusetts natives to feel a sense of pride with every utterance of the word. The different accents and dialects of America reveal the unique history and culture of each region.

Pater noted toward the end of our interview, “One example that my students will talk about is that you hear a lot more of the Boston accent when the Patriots are playing.”

Talking about aspects of home brings out the accent in people, signifying how closely related our home and our accents really are. Dialects have a sense of ownership that go with them, and here in Massachusetts, a state not in shortage of pride, that seems to be just as true as anywhere. Coming to school at UMass has given me a newfound appreciation for New England pride. This is a large community that loves its sports teams, its beautiful land and its way of speaking like no other. There is such a connected culture here that you don’t find just anywhere, and the dialect is essentially a logo for the culture: it’s one of the first things people recognize a region by.

So the next time you pick up on someone else’s dialect, or maybe even your own, know that a dialect is the face of that individual’s culture, community and home. Be proud of your bubblers, Massachusetts, or should I say, be proud of your “bubblah.”

 

Maxwell Zeff is a Collegian columnist and can be reached at [email protected].

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  • M

    MeghanMay 20, 2022 at 10:10 am

    Bubbler is 100% a RI term. I’ve lived here my whole life and that’s what we call it.

    Reply
  • P

    PeteJul 19, 2021 at 8:21 pm

    It’s definitely called a bubbler in Rhode Island too

    Reply
  • S

    Sally MilledMar 3, 2021 at 7:56 pm

    I agree with Jack. We drank cokes in Illinois while Indiana drank Pop. We also use the term water fountain which still manages to irritate my Wisconsin coworkers who insist on bubbler. The thing in the middle of a town square is a fountain. My coworkers and I have a great time comparing names of things and sayings from where we grew up. I grew up in Southern Illinois.

    Reply
  • J

    JackJan 4, 2021 at 5:03 pm

    Y’all are completely wrong about the carbonated beverage! Every properly educated person in the South knows they are “cokes.” The flavor may vary, such as Pepsi, Nehi, Sprite, whatever. They are all “cokes!” At one time, circa 1940, they were sometimes referred to as “dopes” by the young, modern crowd. A reference to the “cocaine in coca cola” semi-myth I think.

    Reply
  • G

    Gery HoranAug 13, 2020 at 2:01 pm

    Funny the article mentions “soda” vs “pop,” but didn’t mention the other strange thing about these words in Boston, where we grew up calling that stuff you drink “tonic.” Soda seems to be more prevalent these days, but back in the day, Coke, Pepsi, Root Beer, etc., was definitely tonic!

    Reply
  • L

    LeeJun 8, 2020 at 4:52 pm

    Don’t know about now, but it was a bubbler for us in school in the ‘60s and ‘70s in suburban Rhode Island also!

    Reply
  • A

    AndreaJun 8, 2020 at 4:22 pm

    I grew up in Green Bay, Wisconsin.. According to a friend of mine, who was from Hartford, Connecticut, but went to the University of Wisconsin/ Madison, the term, “bubbler,,” Is not used in the entire state of Wisconsin,, but mainly in the Northeastern part of the state (Green Bay, the Fox Valley and possibly the Lakeshore area). Maybe is migrated from there to parts of Massachusetts. Growing up, it made perfect sense to call this fixture a bubbler, because the water bubbles up to the drinker. It’s not really a slang word— it was the only word we used.

    Reply
  • N

    Nola L.Mar 11, 2020 at 10:23 am

    I grew up in Milwaukee and only knew the term bubbler when referring to the place to get a drink in public. When I went to college in Tennessee, I was questioned about that term. Had not known other people called it a water fountain or anything else! Also, I learned new regional words and phrases I had never heard before. One of them was the answer to a knock on the dorm room door, “Come!” Rather than “Come in.”

    Reply
  • N

    Neil SinghMay 5, 2019 at 2:17 pm

    Finally, somebody remembers my state exists. Bubbler is the objectively correct term to use, also go Bucks.

    Reply
  • A

    amyApr 18, 2019 at 7:55 pm

    OMG amazing article!!!!!!!!!

    Reply