Re: Cloakroom

--- Eric Christopherson <rakko@...> wrote:

> On May 13, 2008, at 1:51 PM, Peter Collier wrote:
> > This brings to mind an old joke, which requires
> some familiarity
> > with the Birmingham (UK)/Black Country accent to
> fully appreciate:
> >
> > Q What's the difference between buffalo and bison?
> > A  "Yow cor wash yer onds in a buff'low"     /jau)
> kU: w&S j@ rOnz
> > in @ bVfflau)/ - 'you can't  wash your hands in a
> buffalo'
> >
> > The joke being bison/basin are homophonous
> (/boi)sn/)
>
> That's pretty cool. Where does <cor> /kU:/ come
> from? Does <or>
> correspond to /U:/ in other words?
The orthography was purely my attempt to 'write what I
hear', I don't know if there is an agreed spelling.
<cour>, and <core> would be equally valid to my eyes.


I'm not 100% certain of the vowel quality either - In
haste I plumped for /U:/, but on reflection I think it
may be closer to /O:/ (in reality it seems to be
somewhere between the two).  Compared to RP there
certainly seems to be an <a>/<o> correspondance which
I understand to be a feature preserved form Mercian,
e.g. <ond, ommer, mon> for <hand, hammer, man>

There's a section about the dialect in the "Black
Country" article in Wikipedia, including a picture of
a road sign warning of likely traffic delays, written
in the local vernacular ("If yow'm saft enuff ter cum
dahn ere agooin wum, yowr tay ull be spile't")!

P.