pronouncing ditten instead of didn't, Maryland?
Isabelle Cecchini
I'm reading Anne Tyler's _Saint Maybe_, which I quite like so far.
The hero has just entered college, and here is what the narrator has
to say about him:
------------------------------------------------------------------
His lab partner was a girl and he could tell she liked him, but she
seemed too foreign. She came from someplace rural and said "ditten"
instead of "didn't." Also "cooten": "I cooten find my notebook
anywhere."
------------------------------------------------------------------
I am wondering where the "someplace rural" might be where they
pronounce "ditten" instead of "didn't" and "cooten" instead of
"couldn't". There are a few geographical clues scattered here and
there in the portion of the book I 've read so far, but I find it very
difficult, as a foreigner lacking the necessary cultural background,
to interpret them correctly.
Here is what I've got:
I know, because it is written in the blurb on the back page of the
book, that Anne Tyler writes about "middle America". I guess that
"middle America" might be a reference to social class, but I am not
really sure. What if it was about geography instead?
At the beginning, some mention is made about students in the
neighborhood of the hero's home attending "classes at Johns Hopkins".
I know that Johns Hopkins is in Baltimore, so that restricts the area
a bit. But does that mean that the "somewhere rural" is in fact in
Maryland?
The hero has just been admitted to "Sumner College". I cooten find
where "Sumner College" is supposed to be. Anne Tyler might have made
it up, for all I know. The hero's parents drove him there, but there
is no indication of distance given. Can I assume that "Sumner College"
would be in Maryland as well? Or might it be in some other state
altogether? (I am asking, because my --maybe preconceived-- impression
is that students in the USA are much more likely than their French
counterparts to go to university in a place as far from their parents
as they can manage.)
Lots of questions, I know, but that just shows how clueless I am.
Isabelle Ceechini
Michael J Hardy
> I know, because it is written in the blurb on the back page of the
> book, that Anne Tyler writes about "middle America". I guess that
> "middle America" might be a reference to social class, but I am not
> really sure. What if it was about geography instead?
No; it means the geographic middle of the country.
> The hero has just been admitted to "Sumner College". I cooten find
> where "Sumner College" is supposed to be.
I pointed netscape at <http://www.sumner.edu> and found nothing,
so a googled "sumner college", and the only references to it on the
web is in an article about Anne Tyler's book and on a statistics
examination in a context in which the name of a fictitious college is
to be expected. Even if we were to assume that a college with no web
site exists, I would still expect references to it to exist on the web.
So it must be fictitious. -- Mike Hardy
Donna Richoux
All the Anne Tyler books I can remember were set in Maryland. "Middle
America" would mean typical middle-class, not Midwestern. I remember her
one about the couple driving around and arguing sounded a lot like my
parents (who have no Maryland connection).
Her "Accidental Tourist," which was made into a movie, was a lot about
the language differences between the middle-class and lower-class main
characters, and how that got in the way of their affection.
The problem I see with "ditten" and "cooten" is that you might
misinterpret what sound she is trying to convey. You would *not* want to
punch the Ts hard, not like Dit Ten and Coo Ten. It might mean that
near-glottal stop that a lot of us put into words like "button" --
"but'n." Or maybe she meant "didden" and "cooden" because for many
Americans, a T between two vowels is the same as a D.
Anyway, she tends to throw in overly fussy characters. If this guy was
really surprised and turned off by someone saying "didn" for "didn't" --
heck, it's just dropping the final T -- then he was probably very
sheltered in his upbringing and a snob. Lots and lots of people drop the
final T in couldn't, etc -- it's an almost French-like grunt, not a
sharply aspirated consonant. The T makes you stop the N, but you don't
really punch it.
I notice that Ts are disappearing ever more rapidly from American
speech. I hear (and hear myself saying) winner for winter, and dennis
for dentist.
--
Best -- Donna Richoux
Raymond S. Wise
"Donna Richoux" <tr...@euronet.nl> wrote in message
news:1fdhj31.c7q0ig15jstu6N%tr...@euronet.nl...
[...]
>
> Anyway, she tends to throw in overly fussy characters. If this guy was
> really surprised and turned off by someone saying "didn" for "didn't" --
> heck, it's just dropping the final T -- then he was probably very
> sheltered in his upbringing and a snob. Lots and lots of people drop the
> final T in couldn't, etc -- it's an almost French-like grunt, not a
> sharply aspirated consonant. The T makes you stop the N, but you don't
> really punch it.
>
> I notice that Ts are disappearing ever more rapidly from American
> speech. I hear (and hear myself saying) winner for winter, and dennis
> for dentist.
>
I have often observed one person use "can't" in a sentence and the person
with which he is speaking reply "Did you say /k&n/ or /k&nt/?" I've likely
found myself in both positions. I have on occasion wondered if this
diminution of the "-n't" forms to /n/ is what kept the double negative in
some dialects while it was lost in standard English. As linguist Otto
Jespersen pointed out, the languages which have a double negative are those
which have a very weak negative particle, such as Old English with its "ne"
and "n'" and modern French with its "ne" and "n'."
--
Raymond S. Wise
Minneapolis, Minnesota USA
E-mail: mplsray @ yahoo . com
O Reality
>they pronounce "ditten" instead of "didn't" and "cooten"
>instead of "couldn't". There are a few geographical clues scattered
>here and there in the portion of the book I 've read so far, but I
>find it very difficult, as a foreigner lacking the necessary cultural
>background, to interpret them correctly.
I live near the New Jersey midlands (Trenton and its environs) and
people there often say "diddent" and "couldent" ( that is, with a full 2nd
vowel, not a nasal "n" nor a schwa ).
Michael J Hardy
> I pointed netscape at <http://www.sumner.edu> and found nothing,
> so a googled "sumner college", and the only references to it on the
> web is in an article about Anne Tyler's book and on a statistics
> examination in a context in which the name of a fictitious college is
> to be expected.
Did I really write that? I should have used "are" not "is",
and this is *not* something I would normally do in casual speech
or casual writing. It happened because I edited the sentence several
times and overlooked that change. -- Mike Hardy
Richard Fontana
On Sat, 8 Jun 2002, Isabelle Cecchini wrote:
> Hello
>
> I'm reading Anne Tyler's _Saint Maybe_, which I quite like so far.
>
> The hero has just entered college, and here is what the narrator has
> to say about him:
> ------------------------------------------------------------------
> His lab partner was a girl and he could tell she liked him, but she
> seemed too foreign. She came from someplace rural and said "ditten"
> instead of "didn't." Also "cooten": "I cooten find my notebook
> anywhere."
> ------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> I am wondering where the "someplace rural" might be where they
> pronounce "ditten" instead of "didn't" and "cooten" instead of
> "couldn't".
Unclear, as it is probably unclear to the male character, who presumably
is of urban background.
> There are a few geographical clues scattered here and
> there in the portion of the book I 've read so far, but I find it very
> difficult, as a foreigner lacking the necessary cultural background,
> to interpret them correctly.
>
> Here is what I've got:
>
> I know, because it is written in the blurb on the back page of the
> book, that Anne Tyler writes about "middle America". I guess that
> "middle America" might be a reference to social class, but I am not
> really sure. What if it was about geography instead?
I see that Richoux and Hardy have given opposite answers on this one. I'd
say that "Middle America" usually refers, in a vague way, to both a
geographical middle (the Midwest in some very broad sense, broader even
than I'd define it) and a sociocultural middle.
> At the beginning, some mention is made about students in the
> neighborhood of the hero's home attending "classes at Johns Hopkins".
> I know that Johns Hopkins is in Baltimore, so that restricts the area
> a bit. But does that mean that the "somewhere rural" is in fact in
> Maryland?
I'd think so, if they live in that rural area and attend classes in the
same period of time (that is, they don't live "away from home" to attend
Johns Hopkins).
> The hero has just been admitted to "Sumner College". I cooten find
> where "Sumner College" is supposed to be. Anne Tyler might have made
> it up, for all I know.
Probably.
> The hero's parents drove him there, but there
> is no indication of distance given. Can I assume that "Sumner College"
> would be in Maryland as well? Or might it be in some other state
> altogether? (I am asking, because my --maybe preconceived-- impression
> is that students in the USA are much more likely than their French
> counterparts to go to university in a place as far from their parents
> as they can manage.)
There's no particular reason to assume that when a student goes away
to college that college will be in the home state of that student. It
*is* the case that students show some tendency to go to college in the
same region in which they live (this apparently increased in the latest
college application season, as a reaction to the September 11th
incidents). This is so even though some students, typically those of
middle-to-upper-middle class background, *want* to go to college away from
home and in another state. It might be relevant that on the East Coast
(where Maryland is) states are relatively small in area, so it's not
necessarily such a big deal to live in one state and go to college a state
or three away.
Johns Hopkins plays a role in my analysis of American regional
definitions, and this relates to what I mention above, because students
who apply to "Northeastern" colleges tend to consider Johns Hopkins a
Northeastern college, which means that Maryland is in the Northeast.
Regarding the issue of where American kids go to college (as we say):
there's a difference between public and private
colleges/universities, and between elite and non-elite
colleges/universities. Public universities (state schools) provide
subsidized tuition to state residents and typically have a quota limiting
the number of out-of-state students at the undergraduate level (I think
often ranging from 10% to 25%), and the bulk of undergraduate applicants,
I think, are going to be in-state residents anyway. Elite private
colleges with strong national or regional reputations still have a
tendency to be particularly attractive to students from the state or
region in which the college is situated, but they have a more
geographically diverse undergraduate student body generally. The more
culturally marginal the region in which a school is located, the more
regional the student body is going to be. There are social class
differences that play into all of this, but I won't get into those
complications at this juncture.
Isabelle Cecchini
O Reality <re...@knowl.com> a écrit dans le message :
adu51b$hr8$1...@news.chatlink.com...
Thank you! That would place the pronunciation in question in the
North-East area.
Isabelle Cecchini
Isabelle Cecchini
Donna Richoux <tr...@euronet.nl> a écrit dans le message :
1fdhj31.c7q0ig15jstu6N%tr...@euronet.nl...
[...]
> All the Anne Tyler books I can remember were set in Maryland.
Ah! Thank you! That settles it then. Maryland it is.
> "Middle America" would mean typical middle-class, not
> Midwestern. I remember her one about the couple driving
> around and arguing sounded a lot like my parents (who
> have no Maryland connection).
>
> Her "Accidental Tourist," which was made into a movie, was a lot
> about the language differences between the middle-class and
> lower-class main characters, and how that got in the way of their
> affection.
>
> The problem I see with "ditten" and "cooten" is that you might
> misinterpret what sound she is trying to convey. You would *not*
> want to punch the Ts hard, not like Dit Ten and Coo Ten. It might
> mean that near-glottal stop that a lot of us put into words like
> "button" --"but'n." Or maybe she meant "didden" and "cooden"
> because for many Americans, a T between two vowels is the
> same as a D.
>
Yes, I wondered about that.
> Anyway, she tends to throw in overly fussy characters. If this guy
> was really surprised and turned off by someone saying "didn" for
> "didn't" -- heck, it's just dropping the final T -- then he was
> probably very sheltered in his upbringing and a snob. Lots and lots
> of people drop the final T in couldn't, etc -- it's an almost
> French-like grunt, not a sharply aspirated consonant. The T
> makes you stop the N, but you don't really punch it.
>
> I notice that Ts are disappearing ever more rapidly from American
> speech. I hear (and hear myself saying) winner for winter, and
> dennis for dentist.
>
I was familiar with the disappearing "t" in words like "winter" and
"twenty", but I had never paid attention to the phenomenon occuring in
a final position. Thank you for that information!
Isabelle Cecchini
Isabelle Cecchini
Richard Fontana <rfon...@mail.wesleyan.edu> a écrit dans le message :
Pine.GSO.3.95.102060...@facstaff.wesleyan.edu...
[...](which doesn't mean I disregard what you have written. I've read
it with great interest.)
>
> Johns Hopkins plays a role in my analysis of American regional
> definitions, and this relates to what I mention above, because
> students who apply to "Northeastern" colleges tend to consider
> Johns Hopkins a Northeastern college, which means that
> Maryland is in the Northeast.
>
You write as if there was a dispute going on about that. I wasn't
aware of it: for me, looking at a map of the USA from my own little
French corner, it indeed seems that Maryland can be lumped together in
the Northeastern category. On the other hand, as they grow tobacco
over there, and as I associate tobacco-growing with Southern climes, I
gather that Maryland might be considered a Southern state. Is that the
issue in question?
> Regarding the issue of where American kids go to college (as we
>say): there's a difference between public and private
> colleges/universities, and between elite and non-elite
> colleges/universities.
[...]
Thank you for your detailed analysis. It has contributed a lot towards
clarifying things for me.
Isabelle Cecchini
Isabelle Cecchini
Michael J Hardy <mjh...@mit.edu> a écrit dans le message :
3d028620$0$3936$b45e...@senator-bedfellow.mit.edu...
[...]
>
> I pointed netscape at <http://www.sumner.edu> and found nothing,
> so a googled "sumner college", and the only references to it on the
> web is in an article about Anne Tyler's book and on a statistics
> examination in a context in which the name of a fictitious college
> is to be expected. Even if we were to assume that a college with no
> web site exists, I would still expect references to it to exist on
> the web. So it must be fictitious. -- Mike Hardy
>
Thank you! That must be it. I have found two famous people named
Sumner; one a prominent politician in the 19th century, and the other
the winner of a Nobel prize for work in chemistry. Either would make a
good candidate for having a college named after him.
Isabelle Cecchini
Donna Richoux
> Donna Richoux <tr...@euronet.nl> a écrit dans le message :
> > I notice that Ts are disappearing ever more rapidly from American
> > speech. I hear (and hear myself saying) winner for winter, and
> > dennis for dentist.
> >
>
> I was familiar with the disappearing "t" in words like "winter" and
> "twenty", but I had never paid attention to the phenomenon occuring in
> a final position. Thank you for that information!
I haven't tried to analyze exactly when it happens. I notice that
"dentist's" is a common term -- "dentist's office," "dentist's chair"
and I think that extra S makes it just too much. So it becomes "dennis
office" and "dennis chair."
The plain sentence, "No, he's a dentist," would probably get the final
T. Nothing conflicts with it. Possibly I'd give a slight awareness of
the middle T, too, unless I was being very hurried.
Raymond S. Wise
> dans le message :
Have you heard of the Mason-Dixon Line?
From the AHD4 at
http://www.bartleby.com/61/58/M0135800.html
[quote]
Mason-Dixon Line
[...]
The boundary between Pennsylvania and Maryland, regarded as the
division between free and slave states before the Civil War. It was
established between 1763 and 1767 by the British surveyors Charles
Mason (1730-1787) and Jeremiah Dixon (died 1777).
[end quote]
Maryland in fact remained in the Union during the Civil War, but the
Mason-Dixon line was for many years a symbol of the line separating
the North and the South. At least one Warner Brothers cartoon, and
perhaps several, used it as such a symbol.
Some people in Maryland did join the Confederate side, and there were
battles--at least one, anyway--where Union troops from Maryland fought
Confederate troops from Maryland.
When I was growing up in Illinois, I probably thought of Maryland as a
Southern state. However, by the time I went to college at Georgetown
University in Washington, DC, I thought of it as going to college "in
the East." Washington lies between Maryland and Virginia. I have read
that before World War II, Washington was thought of as a sleepy little
Southern town, but the war changed that. Now, so many people
originally from other parts of the country live in the area that I
actually had a person from Virginia--who did not have a typically
Southern accent--ask me if I came from the South.
(Over the years a lot of people have asked me that. I presume it has
something to do with the settling of parts of Illinois by Southerners,
but it still surprises me, because the area I came from is Central
Illinois, north of the area which I consider to have had a notable
Southern influence, Southern Illinois, called also "Egypt." One of my
favorite writers, H. Allen Smith, came from that part of Illinois, and
wrote an autobiographical book called *Lo! The Former Egyptian.*)
GrapeApe
question is not that it is slurred on the end, but that it is overarticulated
in the middle.
Overarticulations can sound every bit as odd, and I'm usually glad to hear
support for mush mouth being more correct from language monitors... usually the
call is to be sure TO articulate.
Bob Cunningham
<isabelle...@wanadoo.fr> said:
[ . . . ]
> > [...] looking at a map of the USA from my own
> > little French corner, it indeed seems that Maryland can be
> > lumped together in the Northeastern category. On the other
> > hand, as they grow tobacco over there, and as I associate
> > tobacco-growing with Southern climes, I gather that
> > Maryland might be considered a Southern state. Is that the
> > issue in question?
Either a cab driver was pulling my leg, or I saw tobacco fields in
Connecticut twenty or thirty years ago.
(Googling.)
Now I see that he probably wasn't, for there is stuff about a Connecticut
agricultural tobacco industry at
http://www.tobaccohistsoc.org/general.htm
. `
It tells me the tobacco fields stretched from Portland, Connecticut
through Massachusetts to the southern tip of Vermont.
Bob Cunningham
(Here it is again with the attribution thingies corrected. If I wanted to
bother people with a tedious explanation, I would say that I first replied
by piggy-backing on someone else's posting; then I decided to reply
directly to Isabelle after canceling the piggy-back response, but when I
did I cut and pasted the piggy-back attribution to the direct response,
but I don't want to bore people, so I won't explain.)
On Sun, 9 Jun 2002 11:11:00 +0200, "Isabelle Cecchini"
<isabelle...@wanadoo.fr> said:
[ . . . ]
> [...] looking at a map of the USA from my own
> little French corner, it indeed seems that Maryland can be
> lumped together in the Northeastern category. On the other
> hand, as they grow tobacco over there, and as I associate
> tobacco-growing with Southern climes, I gather that
> Maryland might be considered a Southern state. Is that the
> issue in question?
Either a cab driver was pulling my leg, or I saw tobacco fields in
Michael J Hardy
> The problem I see with "ditten" and "cooten" is that you might
> misinterpret what sound she is trying to convey. You would *not*
> want to punch the Ts hard, not like Dit Ten and Coo Ten. It might
> mean that near-glottal stop that a lot of us put into words like
> "button" -- "but'n."
That is what I assumed it meant.
> Or maybe she meant "didden" and "cooden" because for many
> Americans, a T between two vowels is the same as a D.
That seems implausible to me, since I don't think she would
have written those as "ditten" and "cooten".
> Anyway, she tends to throw in overly fussy characters. If this guy was
> really surprised and turned off by someone saying "didn" for "didn't" --
> heck, it's just dropping the final T -- then he was probably very
> sheltered in his upbringing and a snob.
As I said, I find it hard to imagine that dropping the final t
is what Anne Tyler had in mind. -- Mike Hardy
Pat Durkin
"Isabelle Cecchini" <isabelle...@wanadoo.fr> wrote in message
news:adv9tf$2hn0s$1...@ID-68874.news.dfncis.de...
I hear the "cooten, ditten, wootten, shooten, hatten" glottal stop (I
think it was Donna who mentioned that term), but could not find a
location in which it is used most strongly. The people I associate it
with are the border areas (Maryland westward through Missouri), with
some leakage northwards into southern Indiana and Illinois, but this
would be anecdotal association only. I have heard some Wisconsinites
use those negative contractions as well.
He hatten studied. She said I cooten go. She said I shooten go.
Actually, as I say and wrote these forms I want to write "hadn, couldn,
shouldn", but the true phonetic reproduction would have to indicate that
these words have a double glottal stop... Using the Hawa'ii version, I
would indicate
/ha'n'/ for hadn't, /di'n'/ for didn't . (Of course some people _do_
say dint, but that is another matter.)
Well, there might be dispute over my assertion that there is a second
"stop" after the nasal, where the final "t" disappears.
R H Draney
news:1fdifsi.93nfie726bhkN%tr...@euronet.nl:
> I haven't tried to analyze exactly when it happens. I notice that
> "dentist's" is a common term -- "dentist's office," "dentist's
> chair" and I think that extra S makes it just too much. So it
> becomes "dennis office" and "dennis chair."
John Lennon noticed this almost forty years ago, and gave the title
"At The Denis" to one of the articles in "A Spaniard In The Works"
...full text at http://www.marklackey.com/lennon/denis.html....r
rzed
I have heard the "ditten" pronunciation, and I cannot for the life of me
remember where. I think it was in Wisconsin, but it was not common there or
anywhere I remember. It's possible it was here in Virginia, next door to
Maryland. And a tobacco state, too. Middle America, though, in any case, by
some definition or another.
I did spend some pleasant weeks in a farmhouse in Wisconsin, surrounded by
fields of tobacco. Do you suppose there's a connection there? I ditten'
smoke it, though
--
rzed
USAGE ends with AGE
Joe Manfre
>Richard Fontana <rfon...@mail.wesleyan.edu> a écrit:
>> Johns Hopkins plays a role in my analysis of American regional
>> definitions, and this relates to what I mention above, because
>> students who apply to "Northeastern" colleges tend to consider
>> Johns Hopkins a Northeastern college, which means that
>> Maryland is in the Northeast.
>
>You write as if there was a dispute going on about that. I wasn't
>aware of it: for me, looking at a map of the USA from my own little
>French corner, it indeed seems that Maryland can be lumped together in
>the Northeastern category. On the other hand, as they grow tobacco
>over there, and as I associate tobacco-growing with Southern climes, I
>gather that Maryland might be considered a Southern state. Is that the
>issue in question?
Fonzie and I have been talking about what part of the country Maryland
is in for some time now. Suffice it to say that it's been a "border
state" for at least a century and a half now -- in fact, one of the
state's nicknames is "The Old Line State" -- so disputes over whether
Maryland is Northern or Southern aren't exactly a new thing.
Nowadays, the urbanized central part of the state where I was born and
raised and still presently live is more culturally Northern than
Southern. There are some rural parts, particularly out on the Eastern
Shore (which is the local name for the part east of the Chesapeake
Bay) which are like unreconstructed Deep South and thus are just as
intimidating to this Northerner as any backwoods Alabama hollow would
be.
I guess I qualify as someone who talks like someone from Maryland
talks, and I think that in informal situations I barely pronounce any
true-blue consonants in "couldn't" or "didn't" other than the first
letter in each. "Couldn't" comes out something like, uh, /kU?@~/ and
"didn't" sounds something like /dI?@~/. There's probably some better
way to ASCII IPA those but I'll be darned if I can figure out how.
Compare Richard Fontana's admissions of how he really pronounces
"Clinton":
JM
Pat Durkin
"rzed" <rza...@ntelos.net> wrote in message
news:sDNM8.406735$%u2.1...@atlpnn01.usenetserver.com...
Minnesota (St Olaf college)recognizes Vernon Co. WI as a tobacco growing
area (but only amonst the Norwegian farmers. There is another area in
which tobacco is grown, as someone's personal website mentions his home
farm near Edgerton (S. Dane Co)
http://www.naha.stolaf.edu/publications/volume32/vol32_01.htm
Cigar, Chaw, and Snuff tobacco were raised here.
Richard Fontana
On Sun, 9 Jun 2002, Isabelle Cecchini wrote:
>
> Richard Fontana <rfon...@mail.wesleyan.edu> a écrit dans le message :
> Pine.GSO.3.95.102060...@facstaff.wesleyan.edu...
>
> [...](which doesn't mean I disregard what you have written. I've read
> it with great interest.)
>
> >
> > Johns Hopkins plays a role in my analysis of American regional
> > definitions, and this relates to what I mention above, because
> > students who apply to "Northeastern" colleges tend to consider
> > Johns Hopkins a Northeastern college, which means that
> > Maryland is in the Northeast.
> >
>
> You write as if there was a dispute going on about that. I wasn't
> aware of it: for me, looking at a map of the USA from my own little
> French corner, it indeed seems that Maryland can be lumped together in
> the Northeastern category.
Well, I don't think most people care too much about this issue, but I'm
the type of guy who likes to argue about what "the Northeast" and "the
South" and so forth mean. It is true that Maryland has, over the years,
become less Southern. Geography helps, of course, but I think Coop will
tell you that his part of Florida isn't particularly Southern either.
> On the other hand, as they grow tobacco
> over there, and as I associate tobacco-growing with Southern climes, I
> gather that Maryland might be considered a Southern state. Is that the
> issue in question?
That isn't really the issue. In fact, as Bob Cunningham has pointed out,
tobacco is grown in as bona fide a Northeastern state as Connecticut
(Litchfield County is especially famous for its shade tobacco). But
you're right that we generally think of tobacco as a Southern crop. I
don't know from Maryland agriculture.
> Thank you for your detailed analysis. It has contributed a lot towards
> clarifying things for me.
Aw, shucks!
R J Valentine
...
} Fonzie and I have been talking about what part of the country Maryland
} is in for some time now. Suffice it to say that it's been a "border
} state" for at least a century and a half now -- in fact, one of the
} state's nicknames is "The Old Line State" -- so disputes over whether
} Maryland is Northern or Southern aren't exactly a new thing.
} Nowadays, the urbanized central part of the state where I was born and
} raised and still presently live is more culturally Northern than
} Southern. There are some rural parts, particularly out on the Eastern
} Shore (which is the local name for the part east of the Chesapeake
} Bay) which are like unreconstructed Deep South and thus are just as
} intimidating to this Northerner as any backwoods Alabama hollow would
} be.
There's what seems to be a fair flavor of the Eastern Shore in some of the
books of Cynthia Voigt, I think starting with _Homecoming_ (give or take a
little) and _A Solitary Blue_. I spent a little time over there this
weekend, because the Wye Oak (reputedly the largest white oak tree in the
world) bit the dust in a thunderstorm Thursday night (I think). By
Saturday night they had cleaned up the street in front of its state park,
cut the branches off the trunk, and loaded it onto a trailer, but they had
a pile of leaves and twigs over on the side that they were letting people
take. By tonight the trailer was gone and the road was open again and
only a sad little stump was left, one side sticking up higher than the
rest, but under 24-hour armed guard (as is the trunk, wherever that is
now). It was something over 400 years old. The white oak is the state
tree of Maryland. (And, for that matter, jousting is the state sport.)
I don't think I've ever felt intimidated on the Eastern Shore, though I
was a little cautious in Alabama, but no more so than I was in Brooklyn,
the land of my ancestors.
--
R. J. Valentine <mailto:r...@smart.net>
Bob Cunningham
<rfon...@mail.wesleyan.edu> said:
> [...]as Bob Cunningham has pointed out,
> tobacco is grown in as bona fide a Northeastern state as Connecticut
> (Litchfield County is especially famous for its shade tobacco).
Actually, what I pointed out is that a Web site I referenced,
http://www.tobaccohistsoc.org/general.htm
, says that tobacco has been grown in Connecticut, Massachusetts, and part
of Vermont.
Looking at the Web site again, I see that the tobacco growing area is part
of the Connecticut River Valley, and it's known as "Tobacco Valley". I
gather the industry has shrunk a lot from what it once was. Here's an
excerpt:
For many reasons, the acreage is now just over 2,000 and
holding. Corporate roofs have replaced the white, billowing
shade tents. The market is good for the wrapper still being
grown, but a few quick changes could mark the end of a
unique agriculture.
I guess what I saw from the taxi many years ago were the "white, billowing
shade tents". Seems strange tobacco can grow in full sun in the south --
or can it? -- but needs shade farther north. Frost protection I can
understand, but shade?
I'm curious about the word "wrapper". Are they saying some kind of
tobacco is good for only the outer wrapper of a cigar?
Michael J Hardy
> Well, I don't think most people care too much about this issue, but I'm
> the type of guy who likes to argue about what "the Northeast" and "the
> South" and so forth mean. It is true that Maryland has, over the years,
> become less Southern. Geography helps, of course, but I think Coop will
> tell you that his part of Florida isn't particularly Southern either.
The Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill area, a.k.a. "The Triangle", is
regarded by some people as not particularly Southern. A substantial
number of the natives do not have recognizably Southern accents.
The area is a center of the software industry to which people relocate
form everywhere because of high-tech jobs. -- Mike Hardy
Mark
Maryland, and would suggest that the State has several distinct regional
speech patterns. Many of the distinctive ways of speech that are noted,
such as the 'ditten' for 'didn't' are bawlmerisms (local to Baltimore). Why
this city is so given to such, I know not, but my dad grew up near 'droodle
park', which I learned was 'Druid Hill' many a year later...
In Allegheny county and points West the accents are decidedly appalachian,
and the eastern shore approaches what many would consider a deep southern
way of speech. Watermen on the Chesapeake (if any have survived to this
date) have a very distinct speech as well.
Mark, in Portland
"Michael J Hardy" <mjh...@mit.edu> wrote in message
news:3d04ec61$0$3935$b45e...@senator-bedfellow.mit.edu...
Feckless
> Hello
>
> I'm reading Anne Tyler's _Saint Maybe_, which I quite like so far.
>
> The hero has just entered college, and here is what the narrator has
> to say about him:
> ------------------------------------------------------------------
> His lab partner was a girl and he could tell she liked him, but she
> seemed too foreign. She came from someplace rural and said "ditten"
> instead of "didn't." Also "cooten": "I cooten find my notebook
> anywhere."
> ------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> pronounce "ditten" instead of "didn't" and "cooten" instead of
> "couldn't". There are a few geographical clues scattered here and
> there in the portion of the book I 've read so far, but I find it very
> difficult, as a foreigner lacking the necessary cultural background,
> to interpret them correctly.
>
>
> I know, because it is written in the blurb on the back page of the
> book, that Anne Tyler writes about "middle America". I guess that
> "middle America" might be a reference to social class, but I am not
> really sure. What if it was about geography instead?
>
> neighborhood of the hero's home attending "classes at Johns Hopkins".
> I know that Johns Hopkins is in Baltimore, so that restricts the area
> a bit. But does that mean that the "somewhere rural" is in fact in
> Maryland?
>
> where "Sumner College" is supposed to be. Anne Tyler might have made
> is no indication of distance given. Can I assume that "Sumner College"
> would be in Maryland as well? Or might it be in some other state
> altogether? (I am asking, because my --maybe preconceived-- impression
> is that students in the USA are much more likely than their French
> counterparts to go to university in a place as far from their parents
> as they can manage.)
FWIW, African-Americans tend to say "ditten," which suggests a Southern
origin, but in fact, one hears it frequently from European-Americans as
well. I'm sure it covers more than just Maryland.
-----= Posted via Newsfeeds.Com, Uncensored Usenet News =-----
http://www.newsfeeds.com - The #1 Newsgroup Service in the World!
-----== Over 80,000 Newsgroups - 16 Different Servers! =-----
Curtis Smith
> I have often observed one person use "can't" in a sentence and the person
> with which he is speaking reply "Did you say /k&n/ or /k&nt/?" I've likely
> found myself in both positions. I have on occasion wondered if this
> diminution of the "-n't" forms to /n/ is what kept the double negative in
> some dialects while it was lost in standard English. As linguist Otto
> Jespersen pointed out, the languages which have a double negative are those
> which have a very weak negative particle, such as Old English with its "ne"
> and "n'" and modern French with its "ne" and "n'."
I've known several folks trying to pick up English who had problems with
discerning the difference between "can" and "can't", but telling them the
following characteristics (at least of local [Atlanta, Georgia] speech) helps
them immensely. In usual speech, what sounds like an unstressed /k&n/ is
"can't". Unstressed "can" is /kn-/ (syllabic n), /kIn/ or /k@n/. When
stressed, /'k&n/ means "can", and "can't" is spoken with the /t/ (usually
heavily aspirated as in /k&nth/ or /kanth/ or /kejnth/).
Isabelle Cecchini
First for helping me to improve my knowledge of US history and
geography.
Then for for clearing up my mind about tobacco-growing areas.
Finally for enlightening me about "ditten", in which the "tt" seems to
be a way of spelling the glo?al stop, followed by some sort of
syllabic /n/.
Emboldened by your reactions, I'll have another query concerning Anne
Tyler's way of transcribing her characters' speech.
Isabelle Cecchini