Street Language

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"Lutz is loots," born-and-bred west-sider Fran Wright (nee Bigelow) explains, crisply: "Bach is baw, Revena is reveena, and I don't know what else there is to talk about!" She went to Bach school. "No one back then ever pronounced it bock! And another one is Koch--it's pronounced cook. Linda Koch was a classmate of mine."

Grace Shackman, a local historian, says that a hobbyhorse of hers is the change from Eber White, named after the farmer who lived west of Seventh, to the one-word Eberwhite. "There were lots of Whites," agrees Wright, "so they named the street Eber White to distinguish it from the others. The accent on Eber White is completely different from Eberwhite."

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The following Calls & letters item appeared in the January 2013 Ann Arbor Observer:

Bock, Baw, and the velar fricative