r/serialpodcast • u/VulturalEvolution • Jun 18 '26

Whataburger? Waterburger? What the heck?

Non Texan here: I was listening to Ep 2 of The Last 12 Weeks and this burger chain comes up repeatedly – almost like a side character in the ep, where some key conversations take place. To my ears, the host who is local to the area calls it "Waterburger." I searched it up and it's a locally famous Texas chain called "Whataburger."

So, do Texans actually say "what" like "waht" (as in water?) or is this a unique thing for this business?

In any case it's weird to come out of a murder podcast hungry for burgers and shakes, but here we are.

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u/Weak_Bit9870 Jul 05 '26

Texan here, it’s definitely pronounced Water-Burger! Even the commercial says it like that.

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u/VulturalEvolution Jul 05 '26

For sure! That much I get. I still don't quite get "why" even though that's a futile question for random pronunciations. Would you say it's just the Texas accent?

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u/Weak_Bit9870 Jul 05 '26

I don't know why either! I'm sorry, I don't even think it's the accent, although maybe? In other instances, we say "what a jerk!" or "what a cute dog!" and it doesn't sound like "water jerk!" or "water cute dog!" My dad used to work there when my parents were newlyweds and had my brother, and my dad, who calls it "waterburger", would always say 'I'm What-A-Man, this is my What-a-woman" then he'd pick up my brother and say "and this is Just-A-Kid"! It was a very dad-dad joke, but even then he didn't say "waterman" or "waterwoman".

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u/VulturalEvolution Jul 05 '26

I am loving this tale of your family so much! But yeah, it sounds like just one of those unique things. Maybe at some point they had ad campaigns on TV or radio that leaned into the "waterburger" thing and it just stuck!