American Language Supplement 2 (49 page)

1
For example, from his colleague of the Fort Smith (Ark.)
Times-Record
in a powerful editorial entitled That “Southern” Accent, Oct. 21, 1944.

2
Southern Long
i, American Speech
, Oct., 1935, pp. 188–90.

3
For example, by William B. Edgerton in Another Note on the Southern Pronunciation of Long
i, American Speech
, Oct., 1935, p. 190. But Edgerton denies that the Southern long
i
is a simple vowel. “There is,” he says, “a scarcely perceptible glide toward
i
” [
ee
].

1
See Supplement I, pp. 227–35. Also, see West, speech of, in the Index thereof.

2
See Supplement I, pp. 228 and 330.

3
The DAE traces it to the
Knickerbocker Magazine
for 1838, but it is probably older. The DAE’s last example of its use is from
Harper’s Magazine
for Oct., 1886. By that time the Old West was fast vanishing, and Chicago, in Eugene Field’s phrase, was preparing “to make culture hum.”

4
See Toynbee, before cited, Vol. III, p. 21, n. 1.

5
A Standard American Language?,
New Republic
, May 25, 1938, p. 68.

1
A Word-List From the Northwest,
Dialect Notes
, Vol. IV, Part I, pp. 26–28.

2
Addenda to the Word-List from the Northwest,
Dialect Notes
, Vol. IV, Part II, 1914, pp. 162–64.

3
For example, Benjamin H. Lehman, in A Word List From Northwestern United States,
Dialect Notes
, 1918, pp. 22–29. One of Lehman’s entries was
blue-liz
, signifying a police patrol-wagon. I suggest that this may have suggested
tin-lizzie
for the Model T Ford, which appeared on Oct. 1, 1908, but did not reach a production of 1,000,000 until Dec. 10, 1915. See also A Word List From the Northwest, by R. M. Garrett,
Dialect Notes
, Vol. V, Part II, 1919, pp. 54–59, and Part III, 1920, pp. 80–84; Additional Words From the Northwest, by B. H. Lehman,
Dialect Notes
, Vol. V, Part V, 1922, p. 181; Westernisms, by Kate Mullen,
American Speech
, Dec., 1925, pp. 149–53; The Speech of the Frontier, by E. E. Dale,
Quarterly Journal of Speech
, Oct., 1941, pp. 353–63; and Westernisms, by Levette J. Davidson,
American Speech
, Feb., 1942, pp. 71–73.

4
Supplement I, pp. 312–13.

1
But see The English Language in the Southwest, by Thomas Matthews Pearce,
New Mexico Historical Review
, July, 1932, pp. 210–32. In this paper, which was read before the Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters of Albuquerque on May 23, 1932, Pearce takes a contrary view. A bibliography of other writings on the subject is in Supplement I, p. 313, notes 2 and 3. An early discussion, Southwestern Slang, by Socrates Hyacinth,
Overland Monthly
, Aug., 1869, pp. 125–31, is reprinted in The Beginnings of American English, edited by M. M. Mathews; Chicago, 1931, pp. 151–63. See also Trader Terms in Southwestern English, by the aforesaid Pearce,
American Speech
, Oct., 1941, pp. 179–86; and Spanish Words That Have Become Westernisms, by Florence A. Chapin,
Editor
, July 25, 1917, p. 121.

2
Editorial, Grand Rapids (Mich.)
Press
, Oct. 27.

3
It has but 12,210 square miles of area, and 2319 of them are under water. Counting only dry land, Texas could hold 21.76413 + Marylands.

1
Mark Twain defined it, in Roughing It, 1872, as “Injun-English for very much.”

2
The question where the best American is spoken is often discussed in the newspapers. Noah Webster, after his tour of the country in 1785–86, is said to have nominated Baltimore. In 1928 a group of 100 gradute students in English at Columbia, after hearing some of the phonograph records assembled by W. Cabell Greet, chose St. Louis. (It’s in St. Louis That Americanese is Spoken, New York
World
, Nov. 9, 1928). Ann Royall, in her Sketches of History, Life and Manners in the United States, published in 1826, said: “The dialect of Washington, exclusive of the foreigners, is the most correct and pure of any part of the United States I have ever yet been in,” and this was supported 117 years later by Francis X. Welch in the New York
Times
. (All Speech Pure to Speakers, Sept. 17, 1943). In 1936 a writer in
Business Week
voted for Benton Harbor, Mich. (Editorially Speaking—, June 6, p. 51). As for me, I wobble between Baltimore and Benton Harbor, inclining toward the former because it is my native place and fixed my own speech-habits, and toward the latter because it is in the same
Sprachgebiet
as Owosso, Mich., the birthplace of Thomas E. Dewey, whose General American is the clearest and best that I have ever heard from the lips of an American rhetorician.

3
The relation of the Alabama-Georgia Dialect to the Provincial Dialect of Great Britain,
Louisiana State University Studies
, No. XX; Baton Rouge, 1935. There is a review by Kemp Malone in
Modern Language Notes
, Jan., 1938, p. 40.

4
Phonology of the Standard English of East Central Alabama, a dissertation submitted for the doctorate at the University of Chicago, 1946. I am indebted to Dr. McMillan for access to this.

1
A Word-List From East Alabama,
Dialect Notes
, Vol. III, Part IV, 1908, pp. 279–328; Part V, 1099, pp. 343–91.

2
A Word-List From Alabama and Some Other Southern States,
Publication of the American Dialect Society No. 2
, Nov., 1944, pp. 6–16.

3
p. 279.

1
New York, 1941, pp. 122–29.

1
Vol. IV, Part II, pp. 164–65.

2
A List of Words From Northwest Arkansas, Vol. II, Part VI, 1904, pp. 416–22; Vol. III, Part 1,1905, pp. 68–103; Vol. III, Part II, 1906, pp. 124–65; Vol. III, Part III, 1907, pp. 205–38, and Vol. III, Part V, 1909, pp. 392–406.

1
A Word List From Southeast Arkansas,
American Speech
, Feb., 1938, pp. 3–7.

2
A Word-List From California, Vol. V. Part IV, pp. 109–14.

3
Supplement I, pp. 348
ff
.

4
Supplement I, pp. 310 and 311.

5
Private communication, Oct. 18, 1939.

1
The Bucolic Dialect of the Plains,
Scribner’s Magazine
, Oct., 1887, pp. 505–12.

2
Reprinted in the St. Louis
Republican
, Oct. 22, 1879, p. 3, and in
American Speech
, Dec. 1941, p. 269.

3
Traced by the DAE to 1880.

4
Traced to 1860.

5
The DAE’s earliest example is dated 1888.

6
Traced to 1864.

7
Handbook of the Linguistic Geography of New England; Providence (R.I.), 1939, p. 8.

1
p. 19.

2
Says Odell Shepard in Connecticut Past and Present; New York, 1939, p. 255: “The thing about these peculiarities that most delights me is that most of them are not peculiar to the State at large, but to special districts, often to single towns.… Despite the levelling influence of highways, automobiles, radio and public education, the idioms and pronunciation of Connecticut people remain as testimony to that extreme localism, that strong independence and segregation of the towns, which has characterized us from the beginning.” An example is
muggs
, a herb cellar, reported and discussed by Donald Barr Chidsey, of Lyme, in
American Speech
, April, 1947, pp. 154–55.

3
List of Words From Western Connecticut,
Dialect Notes
, Vol. I, Part VI, 1893, pp. 276–78; The Dialect of Western Connecticut,
Dialect Notes
, Vol. I, Part VII, 1894, pp. 338–43. Babbitt announced in the latter paper that he proposed to resume discussion of the subject in a book on American pronunciation, then in preparation, but apparently that book was never completed.

4
A Central Connecticut Word-List,
Dialect Notes
, Vol. III, Part I, pp. 1–24.

5
Word List From Danbury, Conn.,
Dialect Notes
, Vol. VI, Part V, pp. 283–84.

1
Delmarva Speech,
American Speech
, Dec., 1933, pp. 56–63. Some further observations on Delaware speech will be found under Maryland. Both States are included in the area to be studied for a proposed Middle Atlantic section of the Linguistic Atlas of the United States and Canada.

2
Florida and Tennessee, by Joseph Leon Hicks,
American Speech
, April, 1940, p. 215.

1
Vol. IV, Part IV, p. 302, and Vol. IV, Part V, pp. 344–45.

2
A Philologist’s Paradise,
Opportunity
, Jan., 1926, pp. 21–23.

3
First published in 1827. A second edition omitted the glossary, but in a third, published in 1837, it was restored and extended.

4
His vocabulary is reprinted in The Beginnings of American English, by M. M. Mathews; Chicago, 1931, pp. 118–21.

1
For example, A Word-List From Georgia, by J. H. Combs,
Dialect Notes
, Vol. V, Part V, 1922, pp. 183–84. This is also true to some extent of Brooks’s paper.

2
For example, Tales of the Okefinokee, by Francis Harper,
American Speech
, May, 1926, pp. 407–20, and The Way We Say It,
North Georgia Review
, Winter, 1941, pp. 129–30.

3
Longstreet (1790–1870) was born at Augusta, Ga. He was, at various times, a lawyer, a judge, a journalist, a Methodist parson and a college president. Georgia Scenes had a great success in its day, but its author is said to have been ashamed of it in his old age.

4
Caldwell (Idaho), 1939, pp. 241–45. The State director was Vardis Fisher.

5
Desert Rats’ Word-List From Eastern Idaho, Dec., 1931, pp. 119–23.

6
New York, 1944.

1
Some Idaho terms, chiefly from the miners’ argot of the Coeur d’ Alenes region, are in A Word List From Northwestern United States, by Benjamin H. Lehman,
Dialect Notes
, Vol. V, Part I, 1918, pp. 22–29.

2
The Pioneer Dialect of Southern Illinois, Vol. II, Part IV, pp. 225–49.

3
Such plurals are common in the English dialects. Wright even records a triple form,
nesteses
, in Essex.

4
Speech Currents in Egypt,
American Speech
, Oct., 1942, pp. 169–73.

1
Miss Smith suggests that
frog-eye gravy
is analogous to
hush-puppy
. It is and it isn’t. In most parts of the South
hush-puppy
means cornmeal cooked in the fat in which fish has been fried, with maybe onions added, and Mr. Davenport Edwards tells me that the term in this sense has got as far as California (private communication, Oct. 31, 1945). But Wentworth presents evidence that
bush-puppy
h also used to designate various other forms of fried mush, without fish. In the mountains of Tennessee, as in Egypt, it is applied to ham gravy.

2
The Dialect of Appalachia in Southern Illinois,
American Speech
, April, pp. 96–99. See also his Pioneer Vocabulary Remains in Southern Illinois,
Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society
, Dec., 1945, pp. 476–80.

1
Wisconsin has since been added, and it is proposed to add Kentucky and a part of Ontario later on.

2
For example, Middle English
ǒ
in American English of the Great Lakes Area,
Papers of the Michigan Academy of Science, Arts, and Letters
, Vol. XXVI, 1941, pp. 56–71; Middle English
W A
in the Speech of the Great Lakes Region,
American Speech
, Dec., 1942, pp. 226–34, and The Survey of Folk Speech in the Great Lakes Area and Ohio River Valley,
Studies in Linguistics
, April, 1943, pp. 2–3.

3
A Sketch of the Linguistic Conditions of Chicago,
Decennial Publications of the University of Chicago
, Series I, Vol. VI.

4
The Stressed Vowels of American English,
Language
, June, p. 97.

5
The Vowels of Chicago English,
Language
, 1935, pp. 148–51.

6
Private communication, Aug. 2, 1938.

1
The DAE traces
Hoosierism
to 1843. For
Hoosier
see Chapter X, Section 4.

2
Eggleston’s Notes on Hoosier Dialect, by Margaret Bloom,
American Speech
, Dec., 1934, pp. 319–20.

3
London, 1889, p. 304.

1
Dialect Words From Southern Indiana, Vol. III, Part II, pp. 113–23.

2
The Pioneer Dialect of Southern Illinois, lately cited.

3
A Word List From Western Indiana,
Dialect Notes
, Vol. II, Part VIII, 1912, pp. 570–93.

4
It was printed in the
Indiana History Bulletin
, Feb., 1940, pp. 120–40.

5
Rural Dialect of Grant County, Indiana, in the Nineties; Chicago, 1942; followed by Additional Dialect of Grant County, Indiana; Chicago, 1943; Grant County, Indiana, Speech and Song; Chicago, 1946; two supplements to the last, 1946.

1
The village was Jalapa, near Marion, and McAtee was born there in 1883. It lies on the Mississinewa river, a branch of the Wabash. McAtee was educated at the University of Indiana, and has occupied important posts with the United States Biological Survey, the National Museum, and the Fish and Wildlife Service, which last he now serves as technical adviser. He is the author of more than 700 professional papers, mainly on birds, insects and plants.

2
Cf
. Supplement I, p. 235.

3
An Obscenity Symbol,
American Speech
, Dec., pp. 264–78.

1
Supplement to the Rural Dialect of Grant County, Indiana, in the ’Nineties; Chicago, 1942, pp. 1 and 2.