Merchandise or Merchandize?

Milwaukee, to be precise. Jim, I assume you're from the UK in your reference to "rubbish." Is "bubbler" more pervasive than "drinking fountain" there?

No, not the UK but Australia ... you're close. Yeah, where I'm from it's "drinking fountain" that'll get you your bewildered cross-eyed vacant stares. The term is unheard of. It's only ever called a "bubbler". Nobody drinks from a fountain unless you're a pigeon.

That's fantastic. It's the same rationale here; fountains are decorative water features. Ah, Australia, a Milwaukeean’s vernacular Eden=)

I'm American and I've never seen it spelled "merchandize." It's always merchandise.

Ohhh Gosh! He's talking about "merchandise"! I wasn't paying attention so I thought he was talking about verbs like "realize" that could be spelled both ways. Sorry :-( It, indeed should be "merchandise"

So in areas where they have bubblers, do they mostly have that older type of drinking fountain (sorry) with the water that does actually bubble up? The type of drinking fountain I see all the time would have to be called something like a spouter, because the water doesn't do anything that resembles bubbling.

"bubbler"?! it sounds like a carbonator for soft drinks, oops soda for US citizens - drinking fountain definitely.

-ise for all UK/Aus spellings
-ize for US spellings

eg organise cf organize

Here in the Milwaukee area, which I'm in as of writing this (even though I've lately mostly been in Madison), we today just have the same form of drinking fountains as anywhere else in the US, but just call them bubblers, unlike the rest of the US. However, the term bubbler does come from a particular sort of drinking fountain which was used here in the past, but that kind of drinking fountain isn't used anymore (but the term bubbler is still used nonetheless).

m-w.com lists the pronunciation <'m&r-ch&n-"dIz> first, which surprises me, as I pronounce the last syllable <-"dIs>. How about y'all?

Definitely a bubbler round here.

The letter "z" is generally disliked here in the UK...the "-ize" ending seems to be avoided in all cases.

It should be "merchandise" and "merchandising", in the US as well as in the UK. Do a Google search and you'll see that "merchandizing" is a minority spelling in the US.
There are several other exceptions like "merchandise":
- advertising, not: advertizing
- comprising, not: comprizing
- improvising, not: improvizing
- suprising, not: surprizing
- devising, not: devizing
...
(about 40, as far as I know...)

The -ize alternatives in these cases are very unusual and will look wrong even to U.S. English native speakers.

This is one of the reasons, why many people from the UK prefer -ise (even though -ize is acceptable), because there are virtually no exceptions you have to think about when using -ise all the time.