A strange American accent
andrew
tends to substitute the diphthong oy for the schwa+r combination. Thus
"murder" sounds like "moider", and "thirty" sounds like "thoity". This
phenomenon is just fascinating to me. It's as if the schwa has risen from
the dead, morphing from a neutral vowel into a full-blown diphthong.
Linguistically it seems improbable. True, r is known to modify a previous
vowel--where I'm from the schwa+r combination is rendered as a kind of
gliding semivowel--but this diphthong version is just weird.
What's the deal with this accent? I'd guess that foreign influence had
something to do with it; after all, the schwa and the r are two of the
hardest English sounds for foreigners. Does it only occur in New York, or do
other places have the same thing?
Adrian Bailey
news:5zNob.9561$Xa1.88...@newssvr21.news.prodigy.com...
> I hate Archie Bunker's accent! He speaks in a peculiar New York style,
which
> tends to substitute the diphthong oy for the schwa+r combination. Thus
> "murder" sounds like "moider", and "thirty" sounds like "thoity". This
> phenomenon is just fascinating to me. It's as if the schwa has risen from
> the dead, morphing from a neutral vowel into a full-blown diphthong.
> Linguistically it seems improbable. True, r is known to modify a previous
> vowel--where I'm from the schwa+r combination is rendered as a kind of
> gliding semivowel--but this diphthong version is just weird.
I guess the "oy" pronunciation developed from the original full
pronunciation of "ur", ie. "oor". If you say "moorder" you'll see it's not
such a great leap to "moirder".
Adrian
andrew
"Adrian Bailey" <da...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:k1Oob.112$%F5....@news-binary.blueyonder.co.uk...
>
> I guess the "oy" pronunciation developed from the original full
> pronunciation of "ur", ie. "oor". If you say "moorder" you'll see it's not
> such a great leap to "moirder".
>
There's no reason to think that "murder" was ever pronounced with a long u.
If it had had the long u, it would probably have been spelt mourder, for
that was the custom in Middle English (due to Norman influence I think).
Furthermore, you've got the timing wrong. Words like "girl", "earth", and
"bird" are all pronounced with the oy sound by New Yorkers. Whatever their
original pronunciation, it is clear that these words acquired the oy sound
AFTER the vowel had been reduced to schwa.
Tony Cooper
By "foreign", do you mean Montana where O'Connor went to the
University of Montana?
Born in Manhattan and raised in Queens, O'Connor came by the ugly
accent used in the "Archie" role naturally. The *really* ugly accent
was his lame attempt at sounding like a southerner in that other show.
Great actor, though.
R F
It has nothing to do with "foreigners" -- the feature was evidently
present among communities of speakers you'd probably consider non-foreign
in the late 19th century, if not earlier. Also, the phenomenon occurs in
New Orleans accents, and some other accents (I've heard it in certain
sorts of Southern African-American accents). From what I understand, this
[V"I] diphthong was once much more prevalent in American dialects, and has
gradually disappeared (including in New York, where you won't hear it from
anyone born after 1941, and you have to search a bit to find anyone born
between 1930 and 1941 using it). I think given the age of the person
Carroll O'Connor was portraying as Archie Bunker -- a World War II vet --
it was certainly realistic for the character to have this accent feature.
FWIW, I think Edith Bunker's accent was a lot more genuine.
Those New Orleans accents that have this diphthong in place of stressed
/R/ can sound uncannily like New York accents, and I say that as someone
who's very familiar with various sorts of New York accents.
You reveal your prejudices and bigotry in characterizing anything having
to do with New York as being associated with "foreigners" (NTTAWWF). BTW,
you can hear the [V"I] diphthong in the speech of actor Humphrey Bogart,
who grew up in a bourgeois family on Manhattan's Upper West Side.
Apparently the middle classes abandoned the [V"I] diphthong about a
generation before the working classes did, or maybe half a generation.
R F
On Sat, 1 Nov 2003, R F wrote:
> It has nothing to do with "foreigners" -- the feature was evidently
> present among communities of speakers you'd probably consider non-foreign
> in the late 19th century, if not earlier. Also, the phenomenon occurs in
> New Orleans accents, and some other accents (I've heard it in certain
> sorts of Southern African-American accents). From what I understand, this
> [V"I] diphthong was once much more prevalent in American dialects, and has
> gradually disappeared (including in New York, where you won't hear it from
> anyone born after 1941, and you have to search a bit to find anyone born
> between 1930 and 1941 using it).
One 1930-born speaker who has this [V"I] diphthong is Harlem Congressman
Charlie Rangel.
Harvey Van Sickle
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/harvey.vansickle/larson.jpg
--
Cheers, Harvey
Ottawa/Toronto/Edmonton for 30 years;
Southern England for the past 21 years.
(for e-mail, change harvey to whhvs)
andrew
"R F" <rfon...@alumni.wesleyan.edu> wrote in message
news:Pine.GSO.4.53.03...@alumni.wesleyan.edu...
> It has nothing to do with "foreigners" -- the feature was evidently
> present among communities of speakers you'd probably consider non-foreign
> in the late 19th century, if not earlier. Also, the phenomenon occurs in
Woah. Scare quotes on "foreigners". Let's not get political here.
> You reveal your prejudices and bigotry in characterizing anything having
Ach! I knew it was coming!
> to do with New York as being associated with "foreigners"
New York is (or was) known for its lots of foreigners: everyone knows that;
it's not exactly a secret. Ever heard of Ellis Island? The "melting pot"?
The "salad bowl"? Haven't you ever seen the movie Gangs of New York?
> (NTTAWWF). BTW,
Unintelligible.
J. W. Love
>New York is (or was) known for its lots of foreigners:
>everyone knows that; it's not exactly a secret. Ever heard
>of Ellis Island?
Ellis Island, New Jersey?
John Varela
> Those New Orleans accents that have this diphthong in place of stressed
> /R/ can sound uncannily like New York accents, and I say that as someone
> who's very familiar with various sorts of New York accents.
Tell me about it. http://www.gumbopages.com/yatspeak.html
I heard a linguist many years ago assert that the 9th Ward New Orleans accent
is a cross between Boston and Brooklyn, for the reason that all three
locations had large numbers of Irish and Italian immigrants. (So why wasn't
Philly included in that list?)
Now, my people were most certainly not from the 9th Ward, they were neither
Irish nor Italian, they were from Uptown, and I grew up in Carrollton.
Nonetheless, when I first arrived in Cambridge a local took me as being from
the Boston area. And that was after spending my last two years of high school
in Tennessee, listening to all those Tennessee and North Georgia accents.
--
John Varela
(Trade "OLD" lamps for "NEW" for email.)
I apologize for munging the address but the spam is too much.
John Varela
> > (NTTAWWF). BTW,
>
> Unintelligible.
Those are easy. (Not That There's Anything Wrong With Foreigners). By The
Way,
andrew
"J. W. Love" <lov...@aol.comix> wrote in message
news:20031101204145...@mb-m25.aol.com...
Yes, that Ellis Island. Most of the immigrants who came through there
settled in racial ghettoes ("identity pockets") in New York.
R F
On Sat, 1 Nov 2003, DE781 wrote:
> "andrew" <and...@wicked.as> wrote in message news:<WHVob.9699$Us3.96...@newssvr21.news.prodigy.com>...
> >
> > New York is (or was) known for its lots of foreigners: everyone knows that;
> > it's not exactly a secret. Ever heard of Ellis Island?
>
> Ellis Island is in New JERSEY (a very different place than New York),
> thank you very much.
Well, you guys won it in the courts, but by rights it belongs to us.
> Yes, New York has a lot of foreigners in the
> city, but I've always heard the New York accent comes from British
> colonial influence.
Dead right, YJ. The New York accents are, at root, 18th century British
accents.
R F
On Sat, 1 Nov 2003, andrew wrote:
> New York is (or was) known for its lots of foreigners: everyone knows that;
> it's not exactly a secret. Ever heard of Ellis Island? The "melting pot"?
> The "salad bowl"? Haven't you ever seen the movie Gangs of New York?
Sure. Daniel Day Lewis led a gang of "natives" -- native-born
"Americans". Did you not hear his attempt (rather lame IMO, unless it was
accurate for the 1860s) at a working-class non-rhotic New York accent?
Day Lewis wasn't even supposed to be Irish AFAIK. Young Joey's right:
The features of the traditional New York accent are of Englandish origin,
predating the Irish and German mass immigration waves of the mid-19th
century.
Are you British? You remind me of how British people here are always
quick to attribute every feature of American English to "German"
influence. Yoy! (NTTAWWGI, especially if that influence is related to
Bavaria [Greatest Region in Germany].)
Robert Lieblich
I see Andrew defines "racial" much as does Joey DE781.
My mother came through Ellis Island at age four, with her parents
and younger sister. They settled somewhere in Brooklyn. They were
Jews from eastern Poland, and so, I am told, was just about everyone
else in their neighborhood. Given that they were Jewish, "ghetto"
probably fits the neighborhood pretty well. But "racial"?
How about "ethnic"?
FWIW, my father, born in New York, lived smack in the middle of the
Lower East Side (Essex at Delancey) during the years my mother was
in Brooklyn. They never met in New York. Both families moved to
Cleveland, and the couple met at Central High School (torn down
about 40 years ago) in that city.
Which accounts, in part, for my presence in this group. No
Cleveland, no me.
--
Bob Lieblich
Who has never lived in New York (county, city, or state)
Schultz
> <...>
> New York is (or was) known for its lots of foreigners: everyone knows that;
Yeah, and they know that Chicago and Detroit and Los Angeles were
full of foreigners too. But none of that has anything to do with
"moider". And the fact that you make the connection reveals your
prejudice.
That speech characteristic was also current in Georgia. Listen to
Oliver Hardy, or Laurel & Hardy. "She's the sweetest goil in all
the woild."
\\P. Schultz
Jonathan Jordan
news:Pine.GSO.4.53.03...@alumni.wesleyan.edu...
>
Which British people here?
Jonathan
Sara Moffat Lorimer
> On Sat, 1 Nov 2003, andrew wrote:
>
> > New York is (or was) known for its lots of foreigners: everyone knows that;
> > it's not exactly a secret. Ever heard of Ellis Island? The "melting pot"?
> > The "salad bowl"? Haven't you ever seen the movie Gangs of New York?
>
> Sure. Daniel Day Lewis led a gang of "natives" -- native-born
> "Americans". Did you not hear his attempt (rather lame IMO, unless it was
> accurate for the 1860s) at a working-class non-rhotic New York accent?
I somehow picked up that Lewis -- Day Lewis? -- based his accent on a
recording of Walt Whitman. I presume it's this one:
http://www.iath.virginia.edu/whitman/audio/
--
SML
ess el five six zero at columbia dot edu
http://pirate-women.com
Brian Wickham
(Sara Moffat Lorimer) wrote:
>
>I somehow picked up that Lewis -- Day Lewis? -- based his accent on a
>recording of Walt Whitman. I presume it's this one:
>http://www.iath.virginia.edu/whitman/audio/
I listened and noticed that there is a lot of Franklin Delano
Roosevelt in that accent. It's apparent in the words, "daughter",
"earth" and "ample". Thanks for alerting me to this sound clip.
Brian Wickham
Richard R. Hershberger
> I hate Archie Bunker's accent!
Then don't watch that show.
> This phenomenon is just fascinating to me.
Ah, then I see you have a problem. Sucks to be you.
Matti Lamprhey
>
> I somehow picked up that Lewis -- Day Lewis? -- based his accent on a
Day-Lewis.
Matti
Areff
Even apart from the "racial ghettoes" thing (and "identity pockets"??),
I think that's factually untrue: most immigrants who came through Ellis
Island did *not* settle in New York (though a lot certainly did).
Sara Moffat Lorimer
Or, for a "we have a mission statement" business approach, DayLewis.
R F
Very interesting. Whitman was born Out On The Island, but moved to
Brooklyn City (Largest City in America?) when he was four, so maybe we can
think of this as a Brooklyn accent, if this is Whitman.
I'm with B. Wickham in hearing something of Frank Roosevelt in this,
though I think it's possibly an "imitate British speech" sort of thing.
Interestingly, as I hear it he wavers between rhoticism and nonrhoticism,
but it's hard to tell.
It doesn't sound much like Day-Lewis in _Gangs_ to me, though. Day-Lewis,
I thought, used a fake-ish accent that nonetheless seemed to reveal some
familiarity with certain Queens accents, of all things. Peter T. Daniels
over at sci.lang claimed that Day-Lewis worked with some sort of linguist
person and they tried to make his accent an accurate reconstruction, BIDK.
The most interesting thing is the "ample" pronunciation. "Ample, fair"
almost sounds Kennedy-style Bostonish (we might want to remember that at
this time the standard for educated cosmopolitan speech in the US was set
by Boston).
R F
Okay, one or two, but it's not always the same one or two.
Bill Bonde ( the oblique allusion in lieu of the frontal attack )
"In the Heat of the Night" AKA "The Bad Accent Show". Not to be
missed!!!
Ben Zimmer
>
> On Sun, 2 Nov 2003, Sara Moffat Lorimer wrote:
>
> > R F wrote:
> >
> > > On Sat, 1 Nov 2003, andrew wrote:
> > >
> > > > New York is (or was) known for its lots of foreigners: everyone knows that;
> > > > it's not exactly a secret. Ever heard of Ellis Island? The "melting pot"?
> > > > The "salad bowl"? Haven't you ever seen the movie Gangs of New York?
> > >
> > > Sure. Daniel Day Lewis led a gang of "natives" -- native-born
> > > "Americans". Did you not hear his attempt (rather lame IMO, unless it was
> > > accurate for the 1860s) at a working-class non-rhotic New York accent?
> >
> > I somehow picked up that Lewis -- Day Lewis? -- based his accent on a
> > recording of Walt Whitman. I presume it's this one:
> > http://www.iath.virginia.edu/whitman/audio/
>
>
> It doesn't sound much like Day-Lewis in _Gangs_ to me, though. Day-Lewis,
> I thought, used a fake-ish accent that nonetheless seemed to reveal some
> familiarity with certain Queens accents, of all things. Peter T. Daniels
> over at sci.lang claimed that Day-Lewis worked with some sort of linguist
> person and they tried to make his accent an accurate reconstruction, BIDK.
I don't see anyone mentioned in the sci.lang discussion of _GoNY_ other
than dialect coach Tim Monich. Here's some info on how Monich coached
Day-Lewis:
http://www.disc2.net/featurettes.html
Also in on the recreation of Old New York was dialogue
coach Tim Monich, who had everyone on the set speaking
like 19th century Lower Manhattanites – who had their
own distinctive "New York Accent" and their own
spectacularly imaginative criminal slang. This is where
terms such as "crib" for a house or "fenced" for selling
hot items, among many others, were born. Monich explains,
"The challenge for us was to get the characters to sound
like tough, street-wise, working class New Yorkers while
staying away from any of the ethnic associations of
modern day New York City."
In addition to extensive research, Monich had to
eventually rely in part on his own linguistic imagination.
"The 1840s and 1860s are too early for recordings," he
says, "so I went back to period sources, humorous writings,
poems, ballads, and newspaper clippings to get an idea of
what New Yorkers sounded like in those days. I also
listened to early recordings of people who were born and
raised in the period, for instance a recording of Walt
Whitman."
Monich helped each actor to meld authentic speech
characteristics with their character’s personalities.
"Daniel Day-Lewis worked very hard on creating a unique
manner of speech for Bill the Butcher," he notes. "He
decided that Bill was a literate person who knew how to
read and write. So what did people read in those days?
First of all, the Bible, so Daniel and I read the Bible
aloud together, having the text shape some sounds. We also
read Whitman. Daniel wanted to do something different with
the rate of speech at which the Butcher spoke. We think of
New Yorkers as speaking fast these days, but Daniel didn't
want to do that. He wanted to do something slow,
deliberate. Marty found that very interesting."
Ben Zimmer
>
> R F wrote:
> >
> > On Sun, 2 Nov 2003, Sara Moffat Lorimer wrote:
> >
> > > R F wrote:
> > >
> > > > On Sat, 1 Nov 2003, andrew wrote:
> > > >
> > > > > New York is (or was) known for its lots of foreigners: everyone knows that;
> > > > > it's not exactly a secret. Ever heard of Ellis Island? The "melting pot"?
> > > > > The "salad bowl"? Haven't you ever seen the movie Gangs of New York?
> > > >
> > > > Sure. Daniel Day Lewis led a gang of "natives" -- native-born
> > > > "Americans". Did you not hear his attempt (rather lame IMO, unless it was
> > > > accurate for the 1860s) at a working-class non-rhotic New York accent?
> > >
> > > I somehow picked up that Lewis -- Day Lewis? -- based his accent on a
> > > recording of Walt Whitman. I presume it's this one:
> > > http://www.iath.virginia.edu/whitman/audio/
> >
> [...]
> >
> > It doesn't sound much like Day-Lewis in _Gangs_ to me, though. Day-Lewis,
> > I thought, used a fake-ish accent that nonetheless seemed to reveal some
> > familiarity with certain Queens accents, of all things. Peter T. Daniels
> > over at sci.lang claimed that Day-Lewis worked with some sort of linguist
> > person and they tried to make his accent an accurate reconstruction, BIDK.
>
> I don't see anyone mentioned in the sci.lang discussion of _GoNY_ other
> than dialect coach Tim Monich. Here's some info on how Monich coached
> Day-Lewis:
>
> http://www.disc2.net/featurettes.html
> In addition to extensive research, Monich had to
> eventually rely in part on his own linguistic imagination.
> "The 1840s and 1860s are too early for recordings," he
> says, "so I went back to period sources, humorous writings,
> poems, ballads, and newspaper clippings to get an idea of
> what New Yorkers sounded like in those days. I also
> listened to early recordings of people who were born and
> raised in the period, for instance a recording of Walt
> Whitman."
And here's more on his use of the Whitman recording:
In search of lost speech patterns, dialect coach Tim
Monich studied old poems, ballads and newspaper articles
(which sometimes reproduced spoken dialect as a form of
humor). He also consulted The Rogue's Lexicon, a book of
underworld idioms compiled in 1859 by a former New York
City police chief who was fascinated by the inner life of
the gangs. A key piece of evidence was a rare 1892 wax
recording of Walt Whitman reciting four lines from Leaves
of Grass. On it, the poet pronounces "world" as "woild,"
and the "a" of "an" nasal and flat, like "ayan." Monich
concluded that native 19th-century New Yorkers sounded
something like Brooklyn cabbies of the mid-20th.
--"Manhattan Mayhem", Smithsonian Magazine, Dec 2002
http://www.smithsonianmag.si.edu/smithsonian/issues02/dec02/pdf/smithsonian_december_2002_manhattan_mayhem.pdf
R F
On Sun, 2 Nov 2003, Ben Zimmer wrote:
> And here's more on his use of the Whitman recording:
>
> In search of lost speech patterns, dialect coach Tim
> Monich studied old poems, ballads and newspaper articles
> (which sometimes reproduced spoken dialect as a form of
> humor). He also consulted The Rogue's Lexicon, a book of
> underworld idioms compiled in 1859 by a former New York
> City police chief who was fascinated by the inner life of
> the gangs. A key piece of evidence was a rare 1892 wax
> recording of Walt Whitman reciting four lines from Leaves
> of Grass. On it, the poet pronounces "world" as "woild,"
> and the "a" of "an" nasal and flat, like "ayan." Monich
> concluded that native 19th-century New Yorkers sounded
> something like Brooklyn cabbies of the mid-20th.
>
> --"Manhattan Mayhem", Smithsonian Magazine, Dec 2002
> http://www.smithsonianmag.si.edu/smithsonian/issues02/dec02/pdf/smithsonian_december_2002_manhattan_mayhem.pdf
But no Brooklyn cabbie *ever* pronounced "world" as "woild". Some of them
may have said [wV"jld] or something along those lines. I'll bet the same
was true of Whitman.
I don't get the distinction Monich is making between "New Yorkers" and
"Brooklyn" persons, either. The [V"j] diphthong was, if anything, more
characteristic of Manhattan speakers than of speakers in the other
boroughs (I mentioned Humphrey Bogart, and there's also Al Smith -- both
of them Manhattan-raised). Were there any Brooklyn-specific cabbies using
[V"j] in the '50s? No more than there would have been Manhattan cabbies
doing so, and probably less likely. It also almost sounds like Monich is
suggesting that Day-Lewis's character was supposed to be of a higher
social class than a 1950s Brooklyn cabbie.
In short, this Monich fellow is a fool. In any case, as I've said,
Day-Lewis ended up sounding more like bad imitation of a post-1965 person
from somewhere in Queens (I don't recall Day-Lewis doing an authentic
[V"j] in the film, but maybe he did a bogus [oI]).
The *true* diphthong isn't really so different from a typical rhotic
stressed [R] -- you just have to substitute a [j] for the [r]-like sound.
Aaron J. Dinkin
> The *true* diphthong isn't really so different from a typical rhotic
> stressed [R] -- you just have to substitute a [j] for the [r]-like sound.
Um, that would produce [i], no? The [r]-like sound in [R] is [R].
-Aaron J. Dinkin
Dr. Whom
andrew
"Robert Lieblich" <Robert....@Verizon.net> wrote in message
news:3FA477EE...@Verizon.net...
> andrew wrote:
> >
> > Yes, that Ellis Island. Most of the immigrants who came through there
> > settled in racial ghettoes ("identity pockets") in New York.
>
> I see Andrew defines "racial" much as does Joey DE781.
>
> How about "ethnic"?
>
I stand corrected. "Ethnic" would have been more precise.
Woody Wordpecker
In AUE we use Kirshenbaum ASCII IPA. [R] is not
well-defined in that notation, for which the definitive
treatment is at http://www.kirshenbaum.net/IPA/faq.html ,
where there appear the equivocal entries
{alv,trl} [r<trl>] [...] (perhaps [R])
{mid,cnt,unr,rzd,vwl} [R]
and in another place:
R {mid,cnt,rzd,vwl} ?? [...]
{alv,trl} ?? [...]
The double question marks appear to mean that Evan wasn't
sure how to define [R]. Since he didn't know, and since his
definition still reflects the uncertainty -- although by
now he may know -- how can we be expected to know, unless he
wants to bring his definition up-to-date by removing the
uncertainty?
I don't see how anyone can use the notation [R] -- without
defining which of the definitions is being chosen -- and
still be claiming to use Kirshenbaum ASCII IPA.
If I wanted to use [R] I would define it on the spot as
{alv,trl} or {mid,cnt,unr,rzd,vwl} -- or maybe something
else, since I would be defining it and hence would be free
to define it any way I wanted to. But I probably will never
want to use [R]. I think [@r] -- or maybe [r-] (syllabic
"r") -- is close enough to what people probably mean by [R].
Aaron J. Dinkin
If you read the entire document whose URL you posted, you will find that
the default interpretation of ASCII IPA <R> is intended to be
{mid,cnt,rzl,vwl} (i.e., IPA schwa hook), and {alv,trl} (i.e., IPA <r>)
is presented as an optional alternative which may be adopted:
: For transcription of any specific language a group can by convention
: alter the character mappings (as an example, for Spanish /R/ may be
: better used to represent /{alv,trl}/ than /{mid,cnt,rzd,vwl}/).
By the doctrine of exception-proves-the-rule, this implies that <R>
represents {mid,cnt,rzd,vwl} in absence of a convention that it does not.
Similarly, the full table presented as Appendix D of that document puts
<R> at the position for {mid,cnt,rzd,vwl} and not of {alv,trl}.
I agree that the quotations you provide above are confusing, and perhaps
ought to be changed to remove the ambiguity. However, I believe it is
clear if one reads the whole document that {mid,cnt,rzd,vwl} is intended
to be the default interpretation of <R> unless one is otherwise warned.
> If I wanted to use [R] I would define it on the spot as
> {alv,trl} or {mid,cnt,unr,rzd,vwl} -- or maybe something
> else, since I would be defining it and hence would be free
> to define it any way I wanted to. But I probably will never
> want to use [R]. I think [@r] -- or maybe [r-] (syllabic
> "r") -- is close enough to what people probably mean by [R].
In my opinion, [r-] is much better: from a phonetic perspective, [r-] and
[R] are the exact same sound. [@r] is a different sound, or rather
sequence of sounds, which increases in rhoticity; [R] (or [r-]) has
constant rhoticity through its duration.
Ben Zimmer
>
> On Sun, 2 Nov 2003, Ben Zimmer wrote:
>
> > And here's more on his use of the Whitman recording:
> >
> > In search of lost speech patterns, dialect coach Tim
> > Monich studied old poems, ballads and newspaper articles
> > (which sometimes reproduced spoken dialect as a form of
> > humor). He also consulted The Rogue's Lexicon, a book of
> > underworld idioms compiled in 1859 by a former New York
> > City police chief who was fascinated by the inner life of
> > the gangs. A key piece of evidence was a rare 1892 wax
> > recording of Walt Whitman reciting four lines from Leaves
> > of Grass. On it, the poet pronounces "world" as "woild,"
> > and the "a" of "an" nasal and flat, like "ayan." Monich
> > concluded that native 19th-century New Yorkers sounded
> > something like Brooklyn cabbies of the mid-20th.
> >
> > --"Manhattan Mayhem", Smithsonian Magazine, Dec 2002
> > http://www.smithsonianmag.si.edu/smithsonian/issues02/dec02/pdf/smithsonian_december_2002_manhattan_mayhem.pdf
>
> But no Brooklyn cabbie *ever* pronounced "world" as "woild". Some of them
> may have said [wV"jld] or something along those lines. I'll bet the same
> was true of Whitman.
I suppose Monich (or the Smithsonian writer) was drawing on the iconic
Hollywood depiction of the cabbie who says "Toity Toid and Toid".
The odd thing is, there's no "world" in the Whitman recording. Here are
the lines that he reads:
America
Centre of equal daughters, equal sons,
All, all alike endear'd, grown, ungrown, young or old
Strong, ample, fair, enduring, capable, rich
Perennial with the Earth, with Freedom, Law and Love...
(The last two lines of "America" -- "A grand, sane, towering, seated
Mother / Chair'd in the adamant of Time"-- are not present on the
recording.)
So the only example of a preconsonantal stressed /R/ here is "Earth",
which to my ear just sounds like [V"T], a run-of-the-mill non-rhotic
pronunciation, certainly not [V"IT] or [V"jT].
More on the recording and its discovery here:
http://www.jigsawlounge.co.uk/film/gangsofnewyorkwax.html
http://chronicle.com/data/internet.dir/itdata/1998/03/t98030301.htm
R F
On Sun, 2 Nov 2003, Ben Zimmer wrote:
> R F wrote:
> >
> > But no Brooklyn cabbie *ever* pronounced "world" as "woild". Some of them
> > may have said [wV"jld] or something along those lines. I'll bet the same
> > was true of Whitman.
>
> I suppose Monich (or the Smithsonian writer) was drawing on the iconic
> Hollywood depiction of the cabbie who says "Toity Toid and Toid".
Yes, a reference to Thirty-third Street and Third Avenue in Jan
Sandhattan. Sure, a 1950s cabbie who mainly drives around Manhattan
looking for his fares might live in Brooklyn; he might also live in
Manhattan or elsewhere. Didn't Travis Bickle live in Manhattan?
(What borough did _Taxi_ take place in?)
> The odd thing is, there's no "world" in the Whitman recording. Here are
> the lines that he reads:
>
> America
> Centre of equal daughters, equal sons,
> All, all alike endear'd, grown, ungrown, young or old
> Strong, ample, fair, enduring, capable, rich
> Perennial with the Earth, with Freedom, Law and Love...
>
> (The last two lines of "America" -- "A grand, sane, towering, seated
> Mother / Chair'd in the adamant of Time"-- are not present on the
> recording.)
>
> So the only example of a preconsonantal stressed /R/ here is "Earth",
> which to my ear just sounds like [V"T], a run-of-the-mill non-rhotic
> pronunciation, certainly not [V"IT] or [V"jT].
Right, I hear it that way too. I think that's one thing that reminds me
of FDR. Also cf. former New Jersey Governor Tom Kean ("puuhfect
togetha"), who had a patrician Manhattan East Side upbringing.
I tried to find some recordings of Manhattanite Al Smith, who was born
about a generation and change later than Whitman, but so far no luck.
Smith was well-known for the [V"I] feature and for, at least as it was
perceived, the "oi"/"er" merger. Indeed, I strongly suspect that it was
Smith who first called the nation's attention to this accent and
diphthong. And who knows? Accent prejudice may have been more
significant than religious and ethnic prejudice in explaining Smith's
presidential election losses.
Jan Sand, do you have this diphthong? Sand's the right sort of age for
it. But you have to figure that Sand's accent is basically Brooklyn if he
spent his childhood in Bay Ridge (fka Yellow Hook in the Town of New
Utrecht). Give that Man[hattan] a microphone.
Ben Zimmer
>
> On Sun, 2 Nov 2003, Ben Zimmer wrote:
>
> > So the only example of a preconsonantal stressed /R/ here is "Earth",
> > which to my ear just sounds like [V"T], a run-of-the-mill non-rhotic
> > pronunciation, certainly not [V"IT] or [V"jT].
>
> Right, I hear it that way too. I think that's one thing that reminds me
> of FDR. Also cf. former New Jersey Governor Tom Kean ("puuhfect
> togetha"), who had a patrician Manhattan East Side upbringing.
How do you figure? Kean was born in New York, but he was brought up in
North Jersey (he comes from a very old New Jersey family). Most
attribute his non-rhotic accent to being sent off at age 13 to St.
Mark's, a prep school in Southborough, MA. (He later went back to teach
history there before entering politics.)
> I tried to find some recordings of Manhattanite Al Smith, who was born
> about a generation and change later than Whitman, but so far no luck.
> Smith was well-known for the [V"I] feature and for, at least as it was
> perceived, the "oi"/"er" merger. Indeed, I strongly suspect that it was
> Smith who first called the nation's attention to this accent and
> diphthong. And who knows? Accent prejudice may have been more
> significant than religious and ethnic prejudice in explaining Smith's
> presidential election losses.
There's an audio file of a speech by Al Smith on this page:
http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5075/
You can hear that [V"I] in words like "person", "church", "serve", and
"service".
Having just watched "Here Comes Mr. Jordan", I find that Al Smith's
accent strikingly resembles that of the great character actor James
Gleason (born in New York in 1882, nine years after Smith).
Brian Wickham
wrote:
>I tried to find some recordings of Manhattanite Al Smith, who was born
>about a generation and change later than Whitman, but so far no luck.
>Smith was well-known for the [V"I] feature and for, at least as it was
>perceived, the "oi"/"er" merger. Indeed, I strongly suspect that it was
>Smith who first called the nation's attention to this accent and
>diphthong. And who knows? Accent prejudice may have been more
>significant than religious and ethnic prejudice in explaining Smith's
>presidential election losses.
>
There are a small handful of Al Smith soundclips in the Ric Burns'
"American Experience: New York - A Documentary Film". The second hour
of Part 5 is about Al Smith and his run for the presidency. Smith had
that gravelly voice that I used to hear in old-timers who came from
the Irish ghettoes and did say "woyld" for "world" but in varying
shades. On the podium at Madison Square Garden in 1928 it is hardly
noticeable, but a little later, in two clips at the Empire State
Building, it is quite apparent.
What I really wanted to hear was the "er" sound as in "jernt" for
"joint" but there were no examples. The standard depiction of that
has always been "berled in earl" for "boiled in oil".
I think you may be wrong about accent prejudice accounting for Smith's
loss. Religious and ethnic prejudice was (and still is) very strong
in rural areas of the US. Smith's accent just identified him as "the
enemy" to those bigots. JFK was able to overcome it by being charming
and having a Boston accent not identified with "Romanism".
Brian Wickham
Donna Richoux
> On Mon, 3 Nov 2003 10:38:24 -0500, R F <rfon...@alumni.wesleyan.edu>
> wrote:
>
>
> >I tried to find some recordings of Manhattanite Al Smith, who was born
> >about a generation and change later than Whitman, but so far no luck.
> >Smith was well-known for the [V"I] feature and for, at least as it was
> >perceived, the "oi"/"er" merger. Indeed, I strongly suspect that it was
> >Smith who first called the nation's attention to this accent and
> >diphthong. And who knows? Accent prejudice may have been more
> >significant than religious and ethnic prejudice in explaining Smith's
> >presidential election losses.
> >
>
> There are a small handful of Al Smith soundclips in the Ric Burns'
> "American Experience: New York - A Documentary Film". The second hour
> of Part 5 is about Al Smith and his run for the presidency. Smith had
> that gravelly voice that I used to hear in old-timers who came from
> the Irish ghettoes and did say "woyld" for "world" but in varying
> shades. On the podium at Madison Square Garden in 1928 it is hardly
> noticeable, but a little later, in two clips at the Empire State
> Building, it is quite apparent.
>
> What I really wanted to hear was the "er" sound as in "jernt" for
> "joint" but there were no examples. The standard depiction of that
> has always been "berled in earl" for "boiled in oil".
He says "appointment" three times in the sound file Ben gave:
http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5075/
The "oi" sounds quite normal to me.
What I have read is that there are *not* two dialectal sounds as
popularly believed (one being jernt/terlet and the other woild/thoid)
but *one* sound which is used in both situations. The listener hears
something unfamiliar and ascribes to it the other spelling.
--
Best -- Donna Richoux
Ben Zimmer
AIUI we'd expect something like [dZRnt] for "joint" only in cases of
hypercorrection, where there's a shift in prestige from non-rhotic to
rhotic pronunciation and the [R] ends up being inserted into contexts
where it never previously existed. Compare the hypercorrection that is
believed to have led to the pronunciation of "wash" as [wOrS] among
South Midland (U.S.) speakers, on the analogy of rhotic [wOr] replacing
non-rhotic [wO:] as the local prestige pronunciation of "war".
http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=3E8B8ED9...@midway.uchicago.edu
R F
On Mon, 3 Nov 2003, Donna Richoux wrote:
> > What I really wanted to hear was the "er" sound as in "jernt" for
> > "joint" but there were no examples. The standard depiction of that
> > has always been "berled in earl" for "boiled in oil".
>
> He says "appointment" three times in the sound file Ben gave:
>
> http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5075/
>
> The "oi" sounds quite normal to me.
>
> What I have read is that there are *not* two dialectal sounds as
> popularly believed (one being jernt/terlet and the other woild/thoid)
> but *one* sound which is used in both situations. The listener hears
> something unfamiliar and ascribes to it the other spelling.
That seems to make sense. OTOH there's precedent for the other
possibility; cf. the supposed switching of "barn" and "born" in some Utah
dialects (NOT the NUPE dialect though).
I mentioned hearing my uncle, born in the mid-1930s, say "When your dad
jerned the Navy ...". To me it sounded like he was saying [dZRnd] (pace
R.E. Cunningham) rather than [dZV"Ind], BWK?. One thing about native New
York speakers, however, and I hope Brian Wickham will agree with me here:
You never really know when they're putting on a regional accent feature
unnaturally, just for fun or whatever. It's sort of a cultural feature,
like British irony is for the Brits, or like doing outdoorsy things is
for Western U.S. speakers. I hadn't seen my uncle much in
recent years prior to hearing him say "jerned", but I'd never thought that
he had exhibited that accent feature in the past.
The real diphthong always sounded more like a distorted /eI/ ("ay") to me
than "oy". Cf. the old radio station WJZ, ancestor of one or more of
our current major broadcasting networks, which originally broadcast[ed]
from Jersey; the call letters were obviously meant to suggest "Jersey",
but they'd've never been thought up in a primarily-rhotic community, and,
moreover, "JZ" suggests [dZV"Izi] in particular. My guess is that the
inaccurate lampooning of the accent feature as being "oy" was due to
mishearing by Westerners; consider, for example, Mel Blanc. OTOH, the
myth was perpetrated by some natives of the region; consider Brooklynite
Jerome Lester Horwitz, better known as Curly "soitanly" Howard.
Woody Wordpecker
<din...@babel.ling.upenn.edu> said:
> On Sun, 02 Nov 2003 22:56:52 GMT, Woody Wordpecker <exw...@earthlink.net> wrote:
> > On Sun, 2 Nov 2003 22:18:26 +0000 (UTC), "Aaron J. Dinkin"
> ><din...@babel.ling.upenn.edu> said:
[ . . . ]
> > In AUE we use Kirshenbaum ASCII IPA. [R] is not
> > well-defined in that notation, for which the definitive
> > treatment is at http://www.kirshenbaum.net/IPA/faq.html ,
> > where there appear the equivocal entries
> > {alv,trl} [r<trl>] [...] (perhaps [R])
> > {mid,cnt,unr,rzd,vwl} [R]
> > and in another place:
> > R {mid,cnt,rzd,vwl} ?? [...]
> > {alv,trl} ?? [...]
> > The double question marks appear to mean that Evan wasn't
> > sure how to define [R]. Since he didn't know, and since his
> > definition still reflects the uncertainty -- although by
> > now he may know -- how can we be expected to know, unless he
> > wants to bring his definition up-to-date by removing the
> > uncertainty?
> > I don't see how anyone can use the notation [R] -- without
> > defining which of the definitions is being chosen -- and
> > still be claiming to use Kirshenbaum ASCII IPA.
> If you read the entire document whose URL you posted, you will find that
> the default interpretation of ASCII IPA <R> is intended to be
> {mid,cnt,rzl,vwl} (i.e., IPA schwa hook), and {alv,trl} (i.e., IPA <r>)
> is presented as an optional alternative which may be adopted:
If I read the entire document, I'm sure that that won't make
me forget Evan's double question marks as quoted above. To
me they reveal uncertainty quite convincingly. Anyone who
reads the entire document will find the double question
marks and hence will know that there was uncertainty in
Evan's mind. It doesn't matter what they read in the rest
of the document.
> : For transcription of any specific language a group can by convention
> : alter the character mappings (as an example, for Spanish /R/ may be
> : better used to represent /{alv,trl}/ than /{mid,cnt,rzd,vwl}/).
ASCII IPA should have been defined to provide a one-to-one
correspondence between ASCII IPA symbols and IPA symbols.
That is not to say that there should be an ASCII IPA symbol
for each IPA symbol, but for each ASCII IPA symbol there
should be a corresponding unique IPA symbol.
> By the doctrine of exception-proves-the-rule, this implies that <R>
> represents {mid,cnt,rzd,vwl} in absence of a convention that it does not.
I doubt that that reasoning would stand a chance in court.
> Similarly, the full table presented as Appendix D of that document puts
> <R> at the position for {mid,cnt,rzd,vwl} and not of {alv,trl}.
So what? Elsewhere in the document [R] is defined as maybe
being [alv,trl]. In Segment D, {alv,trl] is defined to be
"r,trl". That seems to suggest strongly that in ASCII IPA
[alv,trl] should be written [r<trl>].
Evan's double question marks, which appear in several places
in his FAQ, suggest to me that he was undecided what to do
in the corresponding places, maybe thought he would come
back later and resolve the questions, and never did so.
> I agree that the quotations you provide above are confusing, and perhaps
> ought to be changed to remove the ambiguity. However, I believe it is
> clear if one reads the whole document that {mid,cnt,rzd,vwl} is intended
> to be the default interpretation of <R> unless one is otherwise warned.
That's not good enough for me, as long as the double
question marks remain. For your reasoning to hold up, it
must be based on NOT reading the whole document. It seems
clear to me that unless the uncertainty is resolved and the
definition document modified, [R] should be considered not
usable.
How would it hurt to ignore [R] as long as [r-] is available
for the need you appear to want [R] to fill?
> > If I wanted to use [R] I would define it on the spot as
> > {alv,trl} or {mid,cnt,unr,rzd,vwl} -- or maybe something
> > else, since I would be defining it and hence would be free
> > to define it any way I wanted to. But I probably will never
> > want to use [R]. I think [@r] -- or maybe [r-] (syllabic
> > "r") -- is close enough to what people probably mean by [R].
> In my opinion, [r-] is much better: from a phonetic perspective, [r-] and
> [R] are the exact same sound.
That may be true by one definition of [R], but no one can be
sure which definition is meant when someone uses [R] without
on-the-spot definition.
> [@r] is a different sound, or rather
> sequence of sounds, which increases in rhoticity; [R] (or [r-]) has
> constant rhoticity through its duration.
> > If I wanted to use [R] I would define it on the spot as
> > {alv,trl} or {mid,cnt,unr,rzd,vwl} -- or maybe something
> > else, since I would be defining it and hence would be free
> > to define it any way I wanted to. But I probably will never
> > want to use [R]. I think [@r] -- or maybe [r-] (syllabic
> > "r") -- is close enough to what people probably mean by [R].
> In my opinion, [r-] is much better: from a phonetic perspective, [r-] and
> [R] are the exact same sound.
[R] is not well-defined, so it can't be said to be the same
as anything.
> [@r] is a different sound, or rather
> sequence of sounds, which increases in rhoticity; [R] (or [r-]) has
> constant rhoticity through its duration.
I would have to hear you saying [@r] and [r-] to understand
your point. I don't know how to pronounce a syllabic "r"
without some variety of schwa. The schwa is not a
well-defined sound. Phonetics texts say that it can refer
to any of a number of sounds that are somewhere in the mid
central part of the vowel chart. The schwa you think of
when you look at [@r] may be quite different from the one I
think of.
For example, by using the same symbol for [V] and [@],
Merriam-Webster imply that they think it's the same sound
except one is stressed and the other not. To me unstressed
[V] and [@] are quite different sounds.
Please make a recording of your [r-] and your [@r] so that I
can see what the formants look like (forget about the
nebulous [R]).
Ben Zimmer
>
> I mentioned hearing my uncle, born in the mid-1930s, say "When your dad
> jerned the Navy ...". To me it sounded like he was saying [dZRnd] (pace
> R.E. Cunningham) rather than [dZV"Ind], BWK?. One thing about native New
> York speakers, however, and I hope Brian Wickham will agree with me here:
> You never really know when they're putting on a regional accent feature
> unnaturally, just for fun or whatever. It's sort of a cultural feature,
> like British irony is for the Brits, or like doing outdoorsy things is
> for Western U.S. speakers. I hadn't seen my uncle much in
> recent years prior to hearing him say "jerned", but I'd never thought that
> he had exhibited that accent feature in the past.
If your uncle did it just for fun, do you think it was:
a) an imitation of a hypercorrect non-rhotic speaker overextending
rhoticism to "oi" (due to the "oi"/"er" merger);
b) an imitation of how non-New Yorkers inaccurately characterized the
New York "oi"/"er" merger;
c) a rhotic reanalysis of a non-rhotic pronunciation-spelling that New
Yorkers with the "oi"/"er" merger themselves had once used (cf. the
rhotic pronunciation of "er..." as [R], "lurve" as [lRv], etc. [1]); or
d) some combination of the above?
[1]http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=3E3CE978...@midway.uchicago.edu
R F
On Mon, 3 Nov 2003, Ben Zimmer wrote:
> R F wrote:
> >
> > I mentioned hearing my uncle, born in the mid-1930s, say "When your dad
> > jerned the Navy ...". To me it sounded like he was saying [dZRnd] (pace
> > R.E. Cunningham) rather than [dZV"Ind], BWK?. One thing about native New
> > York speakers, however, and I hope Brian Wickham will agree with me here:
> > You never really know when they're putting on a regional accent feature
> > unnaturally, just for fun or whatever. It's sort of a cultural feature,
> > like British irony is for the Brits, or like doing outdoorsy things is
> > for Western U.S. speakers. I hadn't seen my uncle much in
> > recent years prior to hearing him say "jerned", but I'd never thought that
> > he had exhibited that accent feature in the past.
>
> If your uncle did it just for fun, do you think it was:
>
> a) an imitation of a hypercorrect non-rhotic speaker overextending
> rhoticism to "oi" (due to the "oi"/"er" merger);
No.
> b) an imitation of how non-New Yorkers inaccurately characterized the
> New York "oi"/"er" merger;
Hmm.... No, because then he might as well have used "oi" for "er", and
I've never heard anyone do that other than in so obviously a jocular way
(like saying "soitanly" a la Curly).
> c) a rhotic reanalysis of a non-rhotic pronunciation-spelling that New
> Yorkers with the "oi"/"er" merger themselves had once used (cf. the
> rhotic pronunciation of "er..." as [R], "lurve" as [lRv], etc. [1]); or
I don't really understand that one, but I don't think so.
> d) some combination of the above?
I don't know. I myself occasionally use the "er" for "oi" thing for
jocular purposes. Like, I'll say "cherce" for "choice", and "kern a
phrase". It's sort of an insider's thing -- an inside New York speaker's
joke.
The "oi" as in "boy" for "er" is sort of a crude inaccuracy -- that's why
you generally don't use it. It's what an Outsider would use in making fun
of trad New York accents.
I occasionally use [V"I] for jocular purposes, as for example in saying
"Be a person!", "person" here being, I believe, a translation of Yiddish
_mensch_: I say this as [pV"Is@n].
Brian Wickham
wrote:
>
>I mentioned hearing my uncle, born in the mid-1930s, say "When your dad
>jerned the Navy ...". To me it sounded like he was saying [dZRnd] (pace
>R.E. Cunningham) rather than [dZV"Ind], BWK?. One thing about native New
>York speakers, however, and I hope Brian Wickham will agree with me here:
>You never really know when they're putting on a regional accent feature
>unnaturally, just for fun or whatever.
Absolutely. No one takes more pleasure in lampooning the NY accent
than NYers. As mentioned by, I think, Donna, "terlet" is a favorite
that is still heard once in a while, also "Greenpernt". But
"Greenpernt" is an out and out joke the way "Brooklyn" would crack up
Vaudeville audiences and "Anaheim, Azuza & Cucamonga" would kill Jack
Benny's audience. You can't get a NYer to smile by saying "Brooklyn"
but "Greenpernt" will probably do the job.
> It's sort of a cultural feature,
>like British irony is for the Brits, or like doing outdoorsy things is
>for Western U.S. speakers. I hadn't seen my uncle much in
>recent years prior to hearing him say "jerned", but I'd never thought that
>he had exhibited that accent feature in the past.
>
>The real diphthong always sounded more like a distorted /eI/ ("ay") to me
>than "oy". Cf. the old radio station WJZ, ancestor of one or more of
>our current major broadcasting networks, which originally broadcast[ed]
>from Jersey; the call letters were obviously meant to suggest "Jersey",
>but they'd've never been thought up in a primarily-rhotic community, and,
>moreover, "JZ" suggests [dZV"Izi] in particular. My guess is that the
>inaccurate lampooning of the accent feature as being "oy" was due to
>mishearing by Westerners; consider, for example, Mel Blanc.
Mel Blanc is on the record as saying that he got the Bugs Bunny voice
by combining the Brooklyn and Bronx accents. I have no idea which is
supposed to be which and would love to have someone explain the
differences. Maybe the nasally sound is one of them?
>OTOH, the
>myth was perpetrated by some natives of the region; consider Brooklynite
>Jerome Lester Horwitz, better known as Curly "soitanly" Howard.
My inner ear tells me that William Bendix would say "jernt" and
"terlet". I'll have to pay attention when one of his movies
resurfaces.
Brian Wickham
Brian Wickham
wrote:
>
>On Mon, 3 Nov 2003, Ben Zimmer wrote:
>snip
>>
>> If your uncle did it just for fun, do you think it was:
>>
>> a) an imitation of a hypercorrect non-rhotic speaker overextending
>> rhoticism to "oi" (due to the "oi"/"er" merger);
>
>No.
>
>> b) an imitation of how non-New Yorkers inaccurately characterized the
>> New York "oi"/"er" merger;
>
>Hmm.... No, because then he might as well have used "oi" for "er", and
>I've never heard anyone do that other than in so obviously a jocular way
>(like saying "soitanly" a la Curly).
>
>> c) a rhotic reanalysis of a non-rhotic pronunciation-spelling that New
>> Yorkers with the "oi"/"er" merger themselves had once used (cf. the
>> rhotic pronunciation of "er..." as [R], "lurve" as [lRv], etc. [1]); or
>
>I don't really understand that one, but I don't think so.
>
>> d) some combination of the above?
>
>I don't know. I myself occasionally use the "er" for "oi" thing for
>jocular purposes. Like, I'll say "cherce" for "choice", and "kern a
>phrase". It's sort of an insider's thing -- an inside New York speaker's
>joke.
You might notice that Spencer Tracy in the film "Pat & Mike" sizes up
Katherine Hepburn by saying (approx) "There's not much meat on them
bones but what's there is cherce!" Obviously meant as a joke that the
whole nation was expected to get.
As an aside, my wife (Manhattan 1946) tells me that she had an old
aunt on the Lower East Side who innocently used "erlcloth" for
"oilcloth". She heard it as a little girl in the early 1950s and it
just struck her as funny then.
Brian Wickham
Ben Zimmer
>
> On Mon, 3 Nov 2003 16:29:08 -0500, R F <rfon...@alumni.wesleyan.edu>
> wrote:
>
> >I mentioned hearing my uncle, born in the mid-1930s, say "When your dad
> >jerned the Navy ...". To me it sounded like he was saying [dZRnd] (pace
> >R.E. Cunningham) rather than [dZV"Ind], BWK?. One thing about native New
> >York speakers, however, and I hope Brian Wickham will agree with me here:
> >You never really know when they're putting on a regional accent feature
> >unnaturally, just for fun or whatever.
>
> Absolutely. No one takes more pleasure in lampooning the NY accent
> than NYers. As mentioned by, I think, Donna, "terlet" is a favorite
> that is still heard once in a while, also "Greenpernt". But
> "Greenpernt" is an out and out joke the way "Brooklyn" would crack up
> Vaudeville audiences and "Anaheim, Azuza & Cucamonga" would kill Jack
> Benny's audience. You can't get a NYer to smile by saying "Brooklyn"
> but "Greenpernt" will probably do the job.
"So, if you go for oysters and I go for ersters,
I'll order oysters and cancel the ersters..."
Still unclear to me what made the oi->er substitution so humorous for
New Yorkers of a certain generation. As I've suggested elsethread, it
seems like it might have originated as a self-effacing poke at how some
New Yorkers were caught in the mid-20th-century shift in prestige from
rhotic to non-rhotic speech. The lower-middle-class speakers of Labov's
famous study could presumably have uttered things like "Greenpernt" via
hypercorrection. So did such forms conjure up embarrassing images of
social striving?
(I'm reminded of Lainie Kazan's role as the mother in "My Favorite
Year", given to saying things like "Welcome to our humble chapeau...")
Ben Zimmer
Interesting tidbit from the 1939 WPA Guide to New York City (apparent
scanning/transcription errors corrected):
http://www.brooklyn.net/neighborhoods/greenpoint.html
Greenpoint is the birthplace of Mae West, the actress.
The district's residents are credited with originating
the widely publicized "Brooklynese" diction, wherein
"erl" stands for oil and "poil" for pearl. "Greenpernt"
ranks with Canarsie and the Bronx as a butt for New
Yorkers' jokes.
(Googling also reveals a Rocky & Bullwinkle episode called "Greenpernt
Oogle" and the opening line of the Raccoon Alma Mater from "The
Honeymooners": "From the hallowed streets of Greenpernt...")
So I have a feeling I'm dead-wrong in my interpretation of oi->er humor
as indicative of embarrassment over the hypercorrection of social
strivers. Though such forms may have had their early roots in
hypercorrection (again cf. South Midland "warsh"), over time they merely
became emblematic of funny-sounding "Brooklynese". Nu?
Areff
> On Mon, 3 Nov 2003 16:29:08 -0500, R F <rfon...@alumni.wesleyan.edu>
> wrote:
>
>
> >
> >I mentioned hearing my uncle, born in the mid-1930s, say "When your dad
> >jerned the Navy ...". To me it sounded like he was saying [dZRnd] (pace
> >R.E. Cunningham) rather than [dZV"Ind], BWK?. One thing about native New
> >York speakers, however, and I hope Brian Wickham will agree with me here:
> >You never really know when they're putting on a regional accent feature
> >unnaturally, just for fun or whatever.
>
> Absolutely. No one takes more pleasure in lampooning the NY accent
> than NYers. As mentioned by, I think, Donna, "terlet" is a favorite
> that is still heard once in a while, also "Greenpernt".
Yes, definitely. I also say "College Pernt" and (I think because I
heard Norton say it on _The Honeymooners_ [Most Avant-Garde Show In
Television History]) "Erster Bay". And that Erster Bay probably makes
no dialectal sense, but I wonder if it was meant to call to mind the
"ersters" of Baltimore (Bawlmer) down Laurel Way.
Oh, it's worth pointing out that the "er for oi" feature is associated
with non-New York accents: in addition to Baltimore, I've read (maybe
here) about Texans who say "erl" for "oil". (I think by now steam is
coming out of Bob Cunningham's ears.)
> Mel Blanc is on the record as saying that he got the Bugs Bunny voice
> by combining the Brooklyn and Bronx accents. I have no idea which is
> supposed to be which and would love to have someone explain the
> differences. Maybe the nasally sound is one of them?
I was surprised to learn that Judd Hirsch is from the Bronx; I would
have thought Brooklyn. I really have no ear for Bronx accents.
Aaron J. Dinkin
Try saying a [r] as though you were beginning a syllable with it, and
then instead of halting the [r] and moving to some different vowel,
merely prolong the production of the [r] sound. Then you'll have
produced a syllabic [r-], though without anything else in the syllable
to go with it.
> The schwa is not a well-defined sound. Phonetics texts say that it
> can refer to any of a number of sounds that are somewhere in the mid
> central part of the vowel chart. The schwa you think of when you look
> at [@r] may be quite different from the one I think of.
That may be so, but the point is that [@] is a plain vowel, not a
rhoticized sound. (I'm not sure what the opposite of "rhoticized" is.)
[R], by which I mean [r-], is rhoticized.
> For example, by using the same symbol for [V] and [@],
> Merriam-Webster imply that they think it's the same sound
> except one is stressed and the other not.
It probably does imply that, but I bet they didn't intend that
implication. I bet that what they intended was to imply that [V] and [@]
are (in whatever dialect they purport to be representing) the same phoneme.
> Please make a recording of your [r-] and your [@r] so that I
> can see what the formants look like (forget about the
> nebulous [R]).
I'm sorry, I still don't have the proper equipment for that. However,
the telltale mark of a rhoticized sound is a low third formant, so [r-]
would have a low third formant for the entirety of its duration, whereas
[@r] would have a decreasing third formant.
If you look at your own pronunciation of "person" at
<http://www.alt-usage-english.org/three_words.html>, you'll see the kind
of depressed third formant I'm talking about - it's at about 1300 Hz,
while all the other syllables on that graph have third formants above
2000. This formant is constantly low for the entire syllable, which
suggests you use [r-]. (Note that the first and second formants of this
vowel are the same as those in the last syllables of "penman" and "button".)
Richard Fontana's pronunciation of "hoard" at
<http://www.alt-usage-english.org/Fontana_formants.gif> has the kind
of dip in the third formant that I'm referring to for [@r] in his [Or].
I don't think a real [@r] is found in many dialects of English; it
probably exists in Ireland or Wales or somewhere like that.
Articulatorily, rhoticizing a vowel has to do with the position of the
front of the tongue, whereas backness and high/lowness of a vowel has to
do with the position of the middle and back of the tongue (and rounding
is the lips). Since the tip and back of the tongue can be controlled
independently, it's at least theoretically possible to produce, for
instance, a rhoticized version of [u] - this is the vowel equivalent of
pronouncing a [b], [d], and [g] simultaneously. I doubt this is used in
many languages, if any.
R J Valentine
...
} And that Erster Bay probably makes
} no dialectal sense,
It balances the Hempsteads of Nassau County, the Island half of Queens.
} but I wonder if it was meant to call to mind the
} "ersters" of Baltimore (Bawlmer) down Laurel Way.
"Orsters". And there are as many Baltimore's in Baltimore as there are
recipes for crab cakes. You say "Baltimore" and there are some who claim
to be able to tell you within ten blocks of where you grew up (HLOTS).
--
R. J. Valentine <mailto:laure...@wicked.smart.net>
Brian Wickham
>R F <rfon...@alumni.wesleyan.edu> wrote in message news:<Pine.GSO.4.53.03...@alumni.wesleyan.edu>...
>> On Sat, 1 Nov 2003, DE781 wrote:
>>
>> > "andrew" <and...@wicked.as> wrote in message news:<WHVob.9699$Us3.96...@newssvr21.news.prodigy.com>...
>> > >
>> > > New York is (or was) known for its lots of foreigners: everyone knows that;
>> > > it's not exactly a secret. Ever heard of Ellis Island?
>> >
>> > Ellis Island is in New JERSEY (a very different place than New York),
>> > thank you very much.
>>
>> Well, you guys won it in the courts, but by rights it belongs to us.
>
>I never knew it went to courts. I don't get what you mean by "by
>rights". It's closer to NJ, and with the border somewhere in the
>middle of the river, approximately, it makes perfect sense that Ellis
>& Liberty are both in NJ. Now, if only they'd build those nice
>bridges over from JC.
Actually, the border was not in the center of the river. When Lord
Carteret was given the lands between the Hudson and Delaware Rivers
(North & South Rivers) it was explicitly stipulated that the boundary
of New York extended to the low tide mark on the Jersey side of the
Hudson. Duke James was not about to give up any navigational rights
along with his very generous gift of land. It was altered in much
later times but not to include islands that had historically been part
of New York.
So it might make sense that Ellis and Liberty Islands seem to be in
Jersey waters it nevertheless is a fact that both islands have always
been a part of New York. In fact the court ruled that only the parts
of the islands that are landfill are in New Jersey. The original
islands still remain in New York. The Federal government, which held
control of both islands, is responsible for landfilling in Jersey
waters, not New York.
Brian Wickham