An important question about a spider

[mmcirvin]

[Poll #1021392]

Comments

other

[spatch]

"oblivious to history."

[samantha2074.livejournal.com]

I hope you're not considering endorsing certain apocrypha. There are some things I just won't have in my house!

[skapusniak.livejournal.com]

Inzy-Winzy

[doug-palmer.livejournal.com]

Yep. That would be my one, too.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

"Inzy-Winzy" was completely unknown to me, though it's closer to "eensy-weensy" than the others. Could this be the prevalent choice of the Anglosphere outside North America?

[doug-palmer.livejournal.com]

I'm English/Australian, so I suspect so.

However, I wonder if it's an accent thing, and eensy-weensy/inzy-winzy/incy-wincy all sound roughly the same when vowel shifts and the like are taken into account. The "Een" doesn't sound right to me, as it causes me to pull the corners of my mouth right back, whereas "In" is a more relaxed movement with smile-like rise in the corners.

[jwgh]

My second choice would be 'eensy-weensy'.

[thesaucernews.livejournal.com]

...a glistening black nightmare with eyes like an alien constellation, burning with implacable hate, a horrid abomination nesting in the pipes with its inhuman kin, gathered and conspiring, waiting, waiting for the rain to burst forth their armies into the unsuspecting world to feast upon the flesh of the overlanders?

[pvck.livejournal.com]

It's a bug hunt, man! Game over, man, game over!

[tomscud.livejournal.com]

"proletarian"

[sanspoof.livejournal.com]

'Sherkaner Underhill.'

[chicken-cem.livejournal.com]

Oh, don't start this flame war! Oh!!!

Apparently I am in the minority here. Growing up in the midwest my sister and I always said "eensy weensy" but everyone else in the US seems to say itsy bitsy, so we are sad.

EENSY WEENSY, Dammit.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

I am thus far the only person to have voted for "eensy beensy", having probably learned it from my Iowan mother.

[chicken-cem.livejournal.com]

My mother was also from Iowa. Perhaps eensy weensy and eensy beensy are secret cousins. ;-)

[megmimcg.livejournal.com]

We have the same mother and I think its "itsy bitsy" - that is what we sang in preschool.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

Ah, but--by the time you were in preschool, we were in Virginia.

[samantha2074.livejournal.com]

Jorie is enrolled in this music class for which we get CDs for all the music we sing in class. This summer's CD has "The Eensy-Weensy Spider" on it, but I obstinately stick with my "Itsy-Bitsy" roots. The organization that makes the CDs and songbooks is based in Princeton, NJ, but perhaps one or more of the founders is from the Midwest.

[chicken-cem.livejournal.com]

The green cloth-bound songbook my mom got us as kids also had "eensy weensy". Perhaps some publishers are midwestern?

I'm pretty sure

[notr.livejournal.com]

the nursery school teacher who taught me "een(t)sy ween(t)sy" was a Hudson Valley native.

The more important question in my mind is whether the spider has two legs or five. My little sister has been teaching "itsy bitsy" to her daughters with two, which seems to me rather antithetical to its spideriness, while she likewise considers five to make it not tiny enough.

Re: I'm pretty sure

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

The gesture I learned involves walking both hands upward index finger to thumb, leaving the other eight fingers spread free, which I always saw as an abstract representation of an eight-legged creature.

Re: I'm pretty sure

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

Wait, I guess that would be six, not eight.

Re: I'm pretty sure

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

...hmm, midway through only one thumb and forefinger are in contact, leaving eight free to be spider legs. Well, it is pretty abstract.

counting legs

[notr.livejournal.com]

There are two spiders, obviously, one an inverted reflection of the other in the concave surface of the spout. My sister tucks in the other three fingers, so they make the body of the spider and it has only two legs. I learned it with the spiders meeting thumb to pinky instead, leaving three fingers dangling in between the ones that meet.

[megmimcg.livejournal.com]

Good for you!

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

Also, some searching indicates that "teensy weensy" is another minority variant.

[thette.livejournal.com]

No, it's "imse vimse", and he's climbing up his thread.

Hulda can do the gestures.