There are At Least 4 Ways to Say the Word ‘Pumpkin’ in Michigan

A pumpkin is a pumpkin, right? Come autumn it's the type of spice everyone seems to like. It's decoration. It's a plastic conveyance for Halloween candy and eventually, when the season is over, it's squirrel and deer feed.

But how exactly do you say the name of this orange gourd? The question came up recently on the Michigan subreddit of Reddit with someone asking how the word is pronounced and if it's a 'Michigan' think to pronounce it the way one does. The answers where varied but broke down in four main pronunciations.

👇WHAT DO DIFFERENTLY COLORED HALLOWEEN PUMPKINS MEAN - EXPLAINED BELOW👇

• Pump-kin
• Pun-kin
• Pum-kin
• Pung-kin

So the issue really revolves around what happens between the words two syllables. And having a troublespot here is a common trait of Inland Northern dialect speakers - which is nearly everyone in Michigan's Lower Peninsula.

Consider city names like Grand Rapids - or is that Gran-rapids with swallowed up d and no enunciated stop between the words. Or Port Huron, er, Por-unine where the t at the end of Port and h that leads off Huron are obliterated.

READ MORE: This Tiny Patch of Ice is All That's Left of Massive Ice Sheet that Covered all of Michigan in Prehistoric Times

So when it comes to pumpkin pronunciation, another quirk is that the way the word is said changes depending on the use. Redditors explain:

It’s a pumpkin when it’s a vegetable or fruit, but Punkin when it’s my niece.

punkin EXCEPT when saying “carving pumpkins”
I mean, it's definitely supposed to be pump-kin. But I do just say pun-kin sometimes, like punkin pie

Pumpkin for the gourd, pumkin for the pie

No matter how you say it, this may be the season for it, so enjoy them while you can.