Re: CHAT: Vowel shift - angry-beaverisms

At 22:16 -0700 18.6.1999, Barry Garcia wrote:

>Oh yes i forgot about that accent! My Chem teacher last last year talked
>like that. I think she was from Minnesota, and she would always say yes
>with a "ya".
Which is of course a blatant Scandinavianism (in this case.  It will crop
up in German, Dutch and Afrikaans natives' English too.  In my Swedish
dialect "yes" is mostly [?a/] with a rising intonation -- or [ja?] when
meaning "yes I/you/they did it!" as when watching sports or so --, rather
than the prescribed [ja:].  When speaking English I tend to use "yeah";
maybe because "no" is [nE:] in my Swedish dialect! :-)

/BP

 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
  B.Philip Jonsson  <bpj@...> <melroch@...>

        Solitudinem faciunt pacem appellant!
                                            (Tacitus)