Re: New Englishisms

Quoth Nik Taylor:
> Brian Betty wrote:
> > 5. I claim to recognise the audible difference between Mary, marry, and
> > merry, which to my Oregonian roommate is all /meri:/ (here r = American r)
> > and to me is /maeri:/, /mae:ri:/ and /meri:/, respectively.
>
> I say /mIri/
I have /E/ for all three.  I'm from the Chicago area....

> > 7. Also, ts are frequently replaced by glottal stops, especially in
> > syllable-final position: hi' for hit. si' for sit.
>
> Really?  I didn't know that was used outside of England.  Interesting.
It's _very_ striking in some people's speech.  I've tracked it down to
primarily the area around Hartford, CT; the rule is that /t/ goes to [?]
at the end of a stressed syllable.  (It shows off some of the niftier
points about syllabification, too, but that's another issue.)  Thus,
"Manhattan" and "Latin" and even "important" each have a strong glottal
stop in them.  Note that most Americans at least don't pronounce the /t/
as [t] fully, either---it's a reduced- or no-audible- release consonant
in this position; so when you hear the glottal, it really throws you the
first time.

> > The oddest thing is that people in New England also say y'all. That might
> > be because of the influence of the universities ... But y'allses is
> > definitely out.
>
> I'd heard about that.  Southerners are taking over!  Ha-ha-ha-ha!
This is actually something that I've been following for years now.  I'd
say that use of "y'all" has made considerable gains just in the last
twenty years or so; when I was young it was very stigmatised, but
nowadays it's not so bad, and just (_maybe_) gets you a funny look.  I
personally first picked it up in (of all things) my German class, where
the teacher wanted us to be clear about whether it was "you plural" or
"you singular"... I then proceeded to use it when I needed to make the
distinction elsewhere, and it has since worked its way consistently into
my speech.  A _lot_ of people I know (mostly fairly well educated) are
in a similar boat.  Fun stuff, watching linguistic change as it occurs.  :)

--
-=-Don Blaheta-=-=-dpb@cs.brown.edu-=-=-<http://www.cs.brown.edu/~dpb/>-=-
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