The coyote[e] thing.

[solipsistnation]

Okay, so I had this vague theory that people from places where you actually might run into coyotes on a regular basis say "coy-ote", while people who never actually see them say "coy-ote-ee".

Thus, using the ever-so-accurate self-selecting "people I know who use livejournal and answer polls" method, I set out to prove or disprove this. In retrospect, I should have been more clear about only really caring about the final syllables and not so much about the "coy" part, which seems to vary a bit. Discussion of that with my brother ended up with a link to this article about The Oregon Accent:

NPR: Do you speak American? (on the Pacific Northwest).

He also brought up a friend who, when he's not piloting airliners, often shoots things and who my brother considers a pretty much pure example of the Oregon accent discussed in that article. He very definitely says "coy-ote."

The people who also say they say "coy-ote" are mcv (New England, not Maine), arcticelf (the Northwest, specifically I believe Alaska), mathilde (NE, !M). In the write-in portion, purly (NE, !M) said she switchs back and forth and throws in "coydog" for fun. invader_haywire and booniesjen are also switchers.

Another person from places where coyotes roam, desertlover (who grew up in the Southwest) said something interesting: "Both! Ki-ote is less formal." Talking to ninoshka just now, she says that her mother (from Wyoming) says "coy-ote" and also pointed out that "coy-ote-ee" is more formal. I wasn't aware of that. I'm not really sure what sort of coyote-related situations would qualify as formal. Perhaps if a coyote were to preside over your wedding or you encountered a family of coyotes in line at the movie theater you would politely refer to them as "coy-ote-ees." (Or if you were to encounter Coyote wandering down the road-- it's important to be formal when dealing with trickster gods.)

So, the non-Californian Westerners (in retrospect, separating California and the deserty Southwest would also have been a good idea as well, plus sorry Pennsylvania) and non-city-ish Westerners appear to mostly say "coy-ote."

Overall, from my limited and pretty weird selection, it seems like my hypothesis is at least marginally supported. People who mostly hear of coyotes on TV or only discuss them rarely (i.e. city folks) use "coy-ote-ee," while people for whom coyotes have been a part of life for more than a generation say "coy-ote." People with coyotes terrorizing neighborhood pets fall into the first category-- for the most part you didn't grow up with dens of coyotes right over the hill or out in the back 40. Coyotes are relatively new members of your communities, forced to forage in cities and towns as the open spaces they once roamed become more built-up.

I expect people will now pipe up to disagree with me. If you do, please give me some idea of why, and of your family background... If you live in Boston now and say "coy-ote-ee," say, did you grow up on in a farming town in the Midwest? If you remember, what did your parents say?

Comments

[kadath.livejournal.com]

One side of my family aren't native English speakers. How does that skew your data?

[solipsistnation.livejournal.com]

Well, where did you or they learn the word? How have you heard it used?

In which I am unhelpful.

[kadath.livejournal.com]

Like I remember where I learned a word as mundane as "coyote."

Re: In which I am unhelpful.

[solipsistnation.livejournal.com]

Then as I am not a scientist, I shall treat your data just like that of everyone else!

Hooray!

Re: In which I am unhelpful.

[kadath.livejournal.com]

Thinking further upon the subject...I probably learned from "Wile E. Cay-oh-tee, Supra-genius."

Re: In which I am unhelpful.

[slarti.livejournal.com]

This is totally the case for me as well.

[purple-terror.livejournal.com]

Mainer. Definitely had coy-ote-ees in the area. Only time I heard someone call it a coy-ote was when they were affecting some sort of redneck++ accent (e.g. 'out hunt'in them thar coy-ote'), but then they weren't the sort of thing that came up in conversation much so my sample size is sub par.

[agthorr.livejournal.com]

I'm not really sure what sort of coyote-related situations would qualify as formal.

People who mostly hear of coyotes on TV

My experience with TV viewing is that (on TV) accent-less city-folk types tend to say "ky-oat-ee", while cowboy types in rural setting with noticeable western accents tend to say "ky-oat". This, perhaps, creates the perception that "ky-oat-ee" is more formal/educated and "ky-oat" is what one might use when deliberately speaking with a western accent to play-up one's roots.

(Much like I might playfully say "Kraaanstan" for "Cranston" when emphasizing that I grew up in Rhode Island)

YMMV.

[kgola.livejournal.com]

the formal versus informal use is probably related to how often you deal with coyote. If you see 'em a lot, you shorten the word to cay-ote. If you don't see 'em often, you don't say the word often, you leave it long.

That's just my theory, as a Wile. E. Coyote watcher.

[brynndragon.livejournal.com]

One problem is coyotes are native to certain areas and people from those areas tend to have a specific accent. So they say all sorts of words differently from folks in areas without coyotes, making it hard to distinguish familiarity from accent as a factor in pronunciation. This is a problem for other area-specific things like "Nor'easter".

[chorus.livejournal.com]

Well, at least some of us who grew up in an urban area with a lot of coyotes had them just as close as those who grew up elsewhere with a lot of coyotes. "Over in the forest preserve down the street" is pretty close. So is "walking down the shoreline", when one lives a block or so from said shoreline.

Also, deer in my aunt's garden was not an uncommon sight. These days it's more like "deer in the subdivision" or "in the cemetery cropping grass above dead people, eww", but even when I was a kid you saw them in the suburbs and near said forest preserves.

Also, um, I probably skew things by being from the urban area what probably has the largest urban coyote population in the U.S. I imagine it doesn't hurt that it's also an urban area with a very large concentration of forest preserves and a humongous fresh-water coastline.

[etherial.livejournal.com]

arcticelf grew up in Alaska, Maine, and Botswana, IIRC.

[desertlover.livejournal.com]

> (Or if you were to encounter Coyote wandering down the road-- it's > important to be formal when dealing with trickster gods.)

That's exactly what I was thinking when I replied!

If you see one running through a field, you might say to
the person next to you, "Check out that Ki-ote."

But if you were in a group discussion about the recent apartment
complex built in that field, you migh discuss how it is impacting
the habitat of the "coy-ote-ee".

Not sure if either of those is "right", just how I do it.

[highreseuph0ria.livejournal.com]

Half of my family does not speak English as a native language. But I learned it from my mom, who is from Philadelphia, and I guess from the people I know in Northern Virginia. However, my mom likes to play with words (and her pronunciation) so I grew up hearing both. But the main place I got "ki-ote-ee" from was, well... Looney Toons: Wile E. Coyote.

[air-hadoken.livejournal.com]

Meep meep.

Seriously, I never once heard "kai-ote" until "True Men Don't Kill Coyotes" was played as a retro video on MTV years after its release.

[quaintance.livejournal.com]

I realized on reading this post, that, I do occasionally say "Ki- yote", but I can't quite place when. Certain company? I seem to think I am more likely to say Ki-yote if I'm out in the middlle of nowhere and see one, but that's as much me emulating some "on-the-range" attitude. I am such a literalist that I read the word and pulled a pronounciation. If you'd shown me a picture, and asked me to pronounce the name, it might have been different.

Separating regions within California would also have been a good idea. The Cental Valley actually does have a distinct accent, and Northern and Southern CA slang is also very different.

I am wondering about the range of variation for this name within Spanish, and the influence that may have had.

[archdukechocula.livejournal.com]

They are all just different ways of adopting the word coyotl. My guess is the two different usages have more to do with proximity to native Mexican Spanish communities than anything. Ive been around plenty of Coyotes much of my life and most people I know pronounced it ki-oh-tee, without any particular ignorance of or unfamiliarity with the animal on their part.

I just think they are both different ways of using English to deal with the tl ending, for which we have no good analog. In one case, the l sound is dropped all together, in another case, it is replaced with the more familiar te ending. In neither case are they particularly good adaptations of the original word.

[solipsistnation.livejournal.com]

Thank you for pointing out my total laziness in not actually checking the etymology. 8)

You're probably right.