Dialectology and sound change [was: Re: Rating Languages]

Quoting Adam Walker <dreamertwo@...>:

> >From: Nik Taylor <fortytwo@...>
> >Date: Fri, 28 Sep 2001 16:56:55 -0400
> >
> > > Never heard of 'fittin' before.
> >
> >I've heard it a few times, it's rather rural.  Kinda like "Fitty
> cent"
> >:-) (Fifty cents)
> >
>
> It seems to be mainly the same people who say bidness for business.
Those are both very widespread pronunciations in the Southern US:
"Fifty" undergoes consonant cluster simplication, while /z/ shifts
to /d/ before syllablic [n=]. The former is more widespread word-
finally: my father's [swEp] for "swept"; the latter is AFAICT nearly
universal in colloquial Southern speech for "wasn't" [w@dn=t].

Much ink has been spilled over points like these between the
Creolists (who say everything has to do with the trans-Atlantic
slave-trade) and the Dialectologists (who say that everything can
be traceable back to Britain).  Both, naturally, are wrong to a
certain extent.

==============================
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