Re: CHAT Re: Souvlaki (was most looked-up words)
| From: | Elyse M. Grasso <emgrasso@...> |
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| Date: | Tuesday, December 7, 2004, 21:08 |
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I was born in Hartford (1954), spent my early childhood in Manchester to age
10. Moved to the Norwich/New London area through jr/sr high school, got my BA
at Wesleyan in Middletown and worked for a few years in Danbury.
Grinders were everywhere until the Subway shops started opening up. (I think
also in Rhode Island, where I got my first masters degree.)
A few of the older families in Montville (where the Mohegan Sun casino is)
tended to be non-rhotic, but that was rare and sounded strange when we first
moved there.
I don't think Manchester was non-rhotic, though it is east of East Hartford
and the river. On the other hand, my relatives are Italian and French
Canadian and our neighbors were also second and third generation immigrants.
Montville was largely a bedroom community for the Groton Submarine base and
the Electric Boat shipyard, so many of the kids had parents from elsewhere
and dialects tended to converge.
My 6th grade teacher was sort of non-rhotic (she was a daughter of one of the
oldest families in town). It may have been a class thing: her pronunciation
was more Bostonish than the Lathrops (farm family nearest our house) whose
older generation used a different non-rhotic dialect. (More Maine-ish to my
ears in those days, but probably just Old Connecticut rural, like my
great-uncle Les).
(I once joked that the traditional new England twang comes from peoples'
sinuses being clogged all winter in the days before central heat, and that
its disappearance coincides with the availability of central heat and
decongestants
On Tuesday 07 December 2004 03:29 pm, John Cowan wrote:
> Elyse M. Grasso scripsit:
>
> > "Grinders" were also the normal usage in Connecticut (rhotic), at least
> > through 1980.
>
> What part of it?
>
> The old boundary between non-rhotic east and rhotic west in New England
> used to be the Connecticut River, but it's been moving sporadically
> eastward for half a century. Some lexemes like "grinders" may have
> gotten left behind, or even spread westward.
>
> --
> "Kill Gorgûn! Kill orc-folk! John Cowan
> No other words please Wild Men. jcowan@reutershealth.com
> Drive away bad air and darkness
http://www.reutershealth.com
> with bright iron!" --Ghân-buri-Ghân
http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
>