proberbly, princerple
Ben Zimmer
"r" have come up here. In non-rhotic varieties like RP where <ar> is
equivalent to /A:/, <or> is equivalent to /O:/, and <er> is equivalent
to /@/, we get spellings like:
/A:/ - "barth" (for "bath"), "marm" (for "ma'am")
/O:/ - "Eeyore" (for "(h)ee(h)aw")
/@/ - "er...", "Winnie ther Pooh", Led Zeppelin's "D'yer Maker"
Now I see that "proberbly" is a common variant spelling of "probably".
Google shows more than 2,000 Web hits and more than 5,000 Usenet hits.
Its frequency makes me think that people are using it self-consciously,
like other popular UK pronunciation spellings ("innit", "wot", etc.).
Another interesting r-spelling (though not as common as "proberbly") is
"princerple(s)". This was a spelling favored by the 19th-century New
England writer James Russell Lowell in "The Biglow Papers" (1848), which
were "political and social lampoons written in Yankee dialect",
according to the Columbia Encyclopedia. Bartlett's Quotations has these
examples:
----------
http://www.bartleby.com/100/501.html
I don’t believe in princerple,
But oh I du in interest.
It ain’t by princerples nor men
My preudent course is steadied;
I scent which pays the best, an’ then
Go into it baldheaded.
Ez to my princerples, I glory
In hevin’ nothin’ o’ the sort.
----------
Mark Twain used a lot of curious r-spellings too, but I was never sure
whether he was trying to represent rhotic or non-rhotic speech. "The
Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" ends with old Simon Wheeler
rambling on:
"Well, thish-yer Smiley had a yaller one-eyed cow that didn't have no
tail, only just a short stump like a bannanner, and --"
Twain also used "feller" for "fellow" and "foller" for "follow", but I
think these might have actually been pronounced with [@r]. In any case
these are all quite dated, while the Rightpondian r-spellings continue
to be used. Any other noterble examples from Left/Right/Under-pondia?
Raymond S. Wise
news:3DC10693...@midway.uchicago.edu...
[...]
>
> Mark Twain used a lot of curious r-spellings too, but I was never sure
> whether he was trying to represent rhotic or non-rhotic speech. "The
> Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" ends with old Simon Wheeler
> rambling on:
>
> "Well, thish-yer Smiley had a yaller one-eyed cow that didn't have no
> tail, only just a short stump like a bannanner, and --"
>
> Twain also used "feller" for "fellow" and "foller" for "follow", but I
> think these might have actually been pronounced with [@r]. In any case
> these are all quite dated, while the Rightpondian r-spellings continue
> to be used. Any other noterble examples from Left/Right/Under-pondia?
It's my opinion that in all the examples you gave where Mark Twain used "r,"
he intended the "r" to be pronounced and to accurately represent the dialect
in question.
--
Raymond S. Wise
Minneapolis, Minnesota USA
E-mail: mplsray @ yahoo . com
Ben Zimmer
That seems quite likely, considering Twain's reliability with rendering
dialectal forms. I assume that in words like "yellow", "fellow", and
"follow", [-oU] had changed to [-@] and then to [-@r] by Twain's time.
I'm curious, though, if the shift from [-@] to [-@r] in these words
might have had anything to do with the r-spellings of non-rhotic
speakers. In other words, "feller" might have first represented
non-rhotic [fEl@] but then was read as [fEl@r] by rhotic speakers, just
as the hesitation particle "er" gets read as [@r] by rhotic speakers.
In any case, these [-@r] pronunciations persist only in folksy idiomatic
usage, AFAIK. Disney had a hand in keeping the pronunciations alive
with the theme song to "Old Yeller" (1957):
Old Yeller was a fighter
A rootin'-tootin' fighter
In any scrap he knew just what to do
A rough and ready feller
Although his coat was yeller
His bold Texas heart was true blue
(I just discovered these lyrics on the Web-- honestly, I thought the dog
was called "Old Yeller" because it yelled.)
R H Draney
> That seems quite likely, considering Twain's reliability with
> rendering dialectal forms. I assume that in words like "yellow",
> "fellow", and "follow", [-oU] had changed to [-@] and then to
> [-@r] by Twain's time. I'm curious, though, if the shift from [-@]
> to [-@r] in these words might have had anything to do with the
> r-spellings of non-rhotic speakers. In other words, "feller"
> might have first represented non-rhotic [fEl@] but then was read
> as [fEl@r] by rhotic speakers, just as the hesitation particle
> "er" gets read as [@r] by rhotic speakers.
>
> (I just discovered these lyrics on the Web-- honestly, I thought
> the dog was called "Old Yeller" because it yelled.)
Took me a long time before I realized that "holler" (to shout) and
"hollow" (a valley, across which one might have to shout) might be
connected....r
Donna Richoux
And what did you make of it when someone shouted up a hollow tree?
Sorry, Chollie. M-W shows that "holler" meaning to shout comes from
"hollo, halloa," and "hollow" meaning a valley or hollow place comes
from OE holh = hole. "Holler" is a coincydink.
--
Best -- Donna Richoux
R H Draney
>
>R H Draney <dado...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>
>> Took me a long time before I realized that "holler" (to shout) and
>> "hollow" (a valley, across which one might have to shout) might be
>> connected....r
>
>And what did you make of it when someone shouted up a hollow tree?
I clumb down right off....
>Sorry, Chollie. M-W shows that "holler" meaning to shout comes from
>"hollo, halloa," and "hollow" meaning a valley or hollow place comes
>from OE holh = hole. "Holler" is a coincydink.
Let's see, where were those classes for homonyms again?...I think we have
another "flay/fillet" pair, wherein the derivations are independent, the
pronunciations somewhat similar, and there is at least some overlap in
meaning...(the phrase "just a hoot and a holler up the road" could be
interpreted in terms of either word)....r
Raymond S. Wise
I found the following in *The American Heritage Dictionary,* 4th ed., at
http://www.bartleby.com/61/10/H0241000.html
under its second entry for "holler," which it defines as "_Chiefly Upper
Southern U.S._ Variant of hollow."
[quote, with pronunciation indicated by ASCII IPA]
REGIONAL NOTE: One feature of Upper Southern English and specifically of
Appalachian English is its pronunciation of the final unstressed syllable in
words such as _hollow, window,_ and _potato_ as /@r/. _Holler, winder,_ and
_tater_ are merely variant pronunciations reflected in spelling. As a noun,
_holler_ has the specific meaning in the Appalachians of "a small valley
between mountains": _They live up in the holler underneath Big Bald
Mountain._
[end quote]
While I don't have any specific information about these dialects, I would
expect them to still be around. People tend to be conservative about such
things. And the dictionary note certainly seems to be discussing a current
variety of speech.