Re: CHAT YAEPT :Re: Phonological musings (was: Announcement: New auxlang "Choton")

Scripserunt varii:

> Ben Poplawski wrote:
>
> > On Sat, 9 Oct 2004 06:24:52 +0100, Stephen Mulraney
> > <ataltanie@...> wrote:
> >
> >>Roger Mills wrote:
> >>
> >>>Mark J. Reed wrote:
> >>
> >>>As for Upper Class speech (and I don't mean just Wealthy), I doubt this
> >>>country ever had anything as pervasive as England's; each of the old
> >>>major
> >>>cities -- Boston, NYC, Phila, Charleston, New Orleans to name the best
>
> >>Exqueeze me, but where's this Charleston Of Which You Speak? WV or SC?
> >>Or
> >>somewhere else?
Sorry to have been vague.  But surprised there was confusion--  Charleston
WV is neither particularly old nor particularly major. Its website doesn't
say when it was founded, but it couldn't have been much before the early
1800s. Distant ancestors of mine (New Yorkers of Dutch descent) settled in
an area now located just W of the modern VA/WV line sometime in the mid-ish
1700s; it was then very much the frontier-- they lived in small forts and
had periodic troubles with the Indians. That area was then just part of
Virginia; so when I read in Gr-grandfather Mills' history that "we are a
distinguished family with roots in Virginia" I thought, Oh boy, we must have
owned a beautiful spread like Mt. Vernon or Monticello...powdered wigs and
minuets....Not so.

(He also reported that the first Mills in America was the son of some
English nobleman or other who got shanghaied-- turns out that's the
"founding myth" of many American families with pretensions.)

West Virginia as a State only dates from 1863, when it broke away, or was
broken away, from Virginia during That War and joined the Union.
>
> Further googling shows that Charleston SC has a population of
> < 100k, so it's not surprising I hadn't heard if it. Well,
> it's a pity I didn't know about it's history.
Small, but distinguished, and an architectural treasure.

> > It might have been around by that fight at Fort Sumter. ;)
>
It's also the setting of Gershwin's "Porgy and Bess".