Re: OFF-TOPIC: Misspoken... Sort Of

> Paul Bennett scripsit:
>
> > FWIW, IME, /zn/ > /dn/ only occurs in AAVE in North Carolina, not in
> > General North Caronlinian. I think. I'll have to listen more carefully.
>
> Well, my wife doesn't speak AAVE, and although she grew up in NC, hasn't
> lived there for over forty years (spent first in the Miami area and then
> the New York area).  So the trait may be old-fashioned.
(At the risk of YAEPT...)

This change seems highly lexically restricted. It's
also not true for the whole South.  There's a lengthy isogloss
running much of the length of the South separating the regions
close to the East Coast from those not (not exactly a Tidewater~
Piedmont distinction).  In the regions closer to the sea, the
"weren't" "won't" and "wasn't" all fall together as "won't",
and people who say [w@dn=t] are deemed to have affected speech.
Beyond this isogloss, people who collapse these terms are deemed
to use "bad English"; we all know to speak proper you say [idn=t]
etc.

From:    "Mark P. Line" <mark@...>
> I say "idn't", "wudn't" and "dudn't", but not "bidness". (In allegro,
> it's "biness", otherwise "bizness".)
> -- Mark (from NE Oklahoma, dialectologically speaking)
I get the impression that "bidness" is much more socially marked
than the change in auxiliaries.  I never heard it growing up in
Houston, though most everyone spoke as you describe.

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