See my reply elsewhere in the thread!

I'm so glad that xperimentalZa mentioned "A Way with Words," a radio show/podcast which I am a co-host of! This "you're in trouble" expression has been a longstanding mystery. Our listeners brought it to us. No reference work or language researcher seems to have looked into it.

The fact that so many of you know it from Maine and nearby states upsets the most current theory that we have! Up until now, all of the reports that we have had from listeners occurred in mountain, southwest, western plains states: New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, Montana, Wyoming, South Dakota, and North Dakota.

Our current hypothesis was that it might be a form of Spanish "a ver" which has a number of colloquial meanings in Spanish that include "we'll see" or "we'll find out," and we were guessing that the meaning, when used in a classroom was, "you're gonna find out what kind of trouble you're in." More specifially, "¡Uuuu, vas a ver!" meaning, "Oooooh! You're gonna pay the consequences!"

This hypothesis was plausible because from New Mexico and Arizona northward through the mountain states into Colorado is a history of some of the longest Spanish-speaking traditions in North America, representing, in part, a dialect that isn’t spoken anywhere else, and tied directly into the settlement of the land before both Mexico and the US became countries. There is still a great deal of labor moving between those states and the Spanish-speaking heritage is a part of that.

Listeners who are familiar with this expression have rendered it phonetically a variety of ways: a ver, ah vah, ah ver, ah vers, ahhh ver, uh ver, uh vers, um bers, um ver, umber, umbers, umm brr, umm ver, umm verr, ummbrr.

The V and B are interchangeable in most dialects of Spanish, and are easily mistaken for each other by Anglophones.

HOWEVER. If this classroom "you're gonna get it" sound is also being used in Maine and nearby, that hypothesis is null and void. Since we last talked about this on the show in December (https://www.waywordradio.org/a-ver-umm-ver-trouble-at-school/), we also heard from someone who remembers using it as a child in Virginia (and they have a Mennonite background — some connection to the German mentioned elsewhere in tis discussion?).

Besides the link above, here's another place we talked about the expression on the radio show/podcast: https://www.waywordradio.org/umbers/

I welcome all field reports about it from Mainers and others!