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PROVO — If you see a tiny, grayish insect-looking crustacean crawling around this Pioneer Day weekend and you call it a potato bug, David Eddington says you may have the initial wave of pioneers to credit for that.
Many parts of the country refer to these as roly-polies, while some call them pill bugs. But many of the initial settlers of modern-day Utah came from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which was organized in Palmyra, New York, and expanded in Kirtland, Ohio, and, similarly, people in western New York and northeast Ohio also tend to call those creatures potato bugs.
"It was brought from those areas to here by the pioneers probably," Eddington said.
This is just one example that Eddington, a BYU linguistics professor, notes in "Utahisms: Unique Expressions, Inventions, Place Names & More," published earlier this month.
The book dives into various things traditionally tied to Utah like fry sauce and peculiar city names, but it also examines the likely origins behind the way Utahns speak. He determines that it's mostly influenced by settlers and appears to be ever-changing.
The book was sparked by all the times Eddington heard that something was specific to Utah, but what he found through his own studies and others' research is that Utahns don't really have anything out of the ordinary when it comes to linguistics.
"I guess what surprised me is that some things that I thought were very Utahn were dying out more than I had thought," he said, in an interview with KSL.com on Wednesday. "It didn't surprise me but it probably would be surprising for people reading it, that most of what you find here you'll find someplace else. Very few things are unique."
Perhaps the best example of something that isn't unique at all is leaving the "T" out of "mountain," because that's something you can find in other parts of the U.S. — ranging from other states in the Southwest to the parts of the Midwest and even the Northeast.
The largest reason there are so many unique pronunciations might be because Utah quickly became a mini-melting pot at the beginning of its modern settlement, attracting people from different parts of the U.S. and the world.
Many immigrants came straight from England or from Scandinavian countries, which is why some Utah pronunciations likely came from outside countries rather than anywhere else in the U.S. For instance, many people might say, "I used to" to the question "do you ski?" But Utahns might say "I used to do," which derives from the British language, Eddington says.
Meanwhile, Utah is also home to plenty of people from Danish and other Scandinavian ancestries, who may use interjections like "for beautiful" instead of saying 'how beautiful."
If none of these sound familiar, it's because Utah language and pronunciation customs are constantly evolving. That's why those examples are more likely to be heard from older Utahns or people in rural parts of the state, if at all.
Eddington, who lived in Spanish Fork for a long time, said that the well-known pronunciation of fork as "fark" follows this pattern. It emerged at the tail end of the 19th century with a trace back to Irish heritage or Northeast U.S., but it began to die out beginning in the 1950s.
The growth of the state and influences from nearby regions may be behind any changes. In one study that Eddington references, Utahns and westerners could distinguish someone from Utah through their dialect; however, someone from the East Coast couldn't tell western dialects apart, other than they were from the West.
Utah's nation-leading population growth is heavily influenced by net migration, making it a bit of a melting pot once again. So the way that Utahns speak will likely continue to change. One of Eddington's studies even found a pronunciation divide based on the areas within Utah where people are moving.
"I think the urban areas ... they've got a lot more immigration and a lot more outside influences that have come in; and the rural areas tend to hold onto the pronunciation or older words," he said.
Eddington hopes people who read his book realize there really isn't a correct way to define or pronounce language because it's full of variants picked up from various places.
Ultimately, how you pronounce something will likely be determined by where and when you grew up.
"There's really no linguistic ruler you can put on that," he says. "Is it correct to say roly-poly or potato bug? It depends on where you're from."
