Re: fingers

 I'm from New York and I've always said "pinky". My
family is Russian/German/Hungarian/English in origin.
I've also called it "little finger".


--- Thomas Wier <trwier@...> wrote:

> Adam Walker wrote:
> > Well, if it is originally a Scotish borrowing from
> > Dutch, I would expect it to be most common in
> those
> > areas of the country with the highest emmigration
> of
> > Scots, ie the South.  My family all uses the word.
>  We
> > are all Southerners, have been for as long as 400
> > years on some braches of the family.  There is a
> high
> > concentration of Scotish blood in the family and
> also
> > several Dutch lines.  I don't think the useage in
> > theis country is anything new, but I do think it
> may
> > have been a regional usage until not so long ago.
> > Southern usages have been gaining prestige.
>
> That seems quite possible to me.  My family's always
> lived south of the Ohio as well, and my family is
> mostly Scottish (indeed, mostly the same clan,
> MacNaughton).
> Several centuries ago, before the Act of Union,
> Scotland
> was a much poorer place, and many Scots emigrated to
>
> other parts of Europe (one Scot figured prominently
> in the Thirty Years' War, in which England had
> little
> or no part).  Several of my Scottish ancestors lived
> on the continent in this way: Rev. Malcom Wier (b.
> ca 1516)
> died in Geneva;  his grandson John Wier (aka Jan
> Vyer,
> b. ca 1645) lived in Amsterdam; the latter's son Dr.
> John
> Wier lived in Brussels, and his children returned to
>
> live in Scotland only to move later to Northern
> Ireland
> thence another generation later to South Carolina
> some time in the late 18th century.
>
> Anyways, that's a round-about way of saying that I
> find
> it quite possible that the vector for introducing
> words
> was Scottish, and that this was taken thence to
> America.
> Question:  how common is "pinky" in the New York
> area?
> Dutch Americans living in what became New York would
> be
> another vector for the word.
>
>
 =========================================================================
> Thomas Wier	       "I find it useful to meet my
> subjects personally,
> Dept. of Linguistics    because our secret police
> don't get it right
> University of Chicago   half the time." --
> octogenarian Sheikh Zayed of
> 1010 E. 59th Street     Abu Dhabi, to a French
> reporter.
> Chicago, IL 60637
>

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