Re: muzzies

Quoting Heather Rice <florarroz@...>:

> > In Texas, the dialectal term for "mosquito" is
> > "skeeter", either [skid@] or [skidr=]. (Since final
> > /o/ in Texan shifts to schwa, the first of those two has
> > transparently just lost its first syllable.)
>
> I don't know where this Texan dialect originated, but
> Texas is not its only home.  There are plenty of
> skeeters in Missouri too. ;-)
I was careful not exclude the possibility that it was a
general Southernism.  Not being a dialectologist, however,
I wanted to hedge my comments a little.

From what I know about Missouri, though, it seems to be a pretty
interesting place dialectally.  It's kinda at the crossroads of
two massive chain vowel-shifts in American English: the Northern
Cities Shift, and the Southern Shift, which go in opposite directions
in the vowel space.

==============================
Thomas Wier <trwier@...>

"If a man demands justice, not merely as an abstract concept,
but in setting up the life of a society, and if he holds, further,
that within that society (however defined) all men have equal rights,
then the odds are that his views, sooner rather than later, are going
to set something or someone on fire." Peter Green, in _From Alexander
to Actium_, on Spartan king Cleomenes III