American Language Supplement 2 (52 page)

1
The authorities on Spanish loans in the Southwest are listed in Supplement I, p. 313, n. 3.

2
See AL4, pp. 647–49.

3
The Ithaca Dialect: a Study of Present English,
Dialect Notes
, Vol. I, Part III, 1891, pp. 85–173; republished at Zwickau, Germany, 1931.

4
i.e.
, with London or Oxford English.

5
Emerson was a charter member of the American Dialect Society, and at the start was its district secretary for western New York. He later served on its editing committee, and after that was secretary-treasurer until 1905, when he became president. He was professor of English at Western Reserve University, Cleveland, from 1896 until his death in 1927. His books include three histories of the English language and a Middle English reader.

1
The Pronunciation of English in the State of New York,
Dialect Notes
, Vol. I, Part IX, 1896, pp. 445–56.

2
A Word-List From Western New York,
Dialect Notes
, Vol. III, Part VI, 1910, pp. 435–51.

3
A Word-List From Central New York,
Dialect Notes
, Vol. III, Part VIII, 1912, pp. 565–69.

4
Two Word-Lists From (I) Roxbury, New York, and (II) Maine,
Dialect Notes
, Vol. IV, Part I, 1913, pp. 54–55

5
Colloquial Expressions From Madison County, New York,
American Speech
, Dec., 1929, pp. 151–53. Howard F. Barker commented on this word-list in
American Speech
, Aug., 1930, pp. 493–95.

6
Dialect of Northeastern New York,
American Speech
, April, 1933, pp. 43–45.

7
Pronunciation in Upstate New York, April, pp. 107–12; Oct., 1935, pp. 208–12; Dec., 1935, pp. 292–97; Feb., 1936, pp. 68–77; April, 1936, pp. 142–44; Dec., 1936, pp. 307–13; April, 1937, pp. 122–27.

8
Pronunciation in Downstate New York,
American Speech
, Feb., 1942, pp. 30–41; Oct., 1942, pp. 149–57.

1
In The Dialect of Up-State New York: a Study of the Folk-Speech in Two Works of Marietta Holley,
Studies in Philology
, July, 1945, pp. 690–707, E. E. Ericson undertook an investigation of the vocabulary of two once very popular books – Samantha at Saratoga; Chicago, 1887, and Samantha at the St. Louis Exposition; New York, 1904. Unhappily, it is not quite clear just what part of New York State housed Samantha Allen and her husband Josiah. Ericson’s report indicates that their speech, as recorded by Miss Holley (1844–1926), differed very little from the general vulgar American.

2
Pronunciation in Downstate New York,
American Speech
, Feb., 1942, pp. 30–41; Oct., 1942, pp. 149–57.

1
His list appears in Dictionary of the New York Dialect of the English Tongue,
c
. 1820, by Cullen Bryant,
American Speech
, April, 1941, pp. 157–58.

2
The English of the Lower Classes in New York City and Vicinity,
Dialect Notes
, Vol. I, Part IX, pp. 457–64.

3
Raven I. McDavid, Jr., says in Dialect Geography and Social Science Problems,
Social Forces
, Dec., 1946, p. 170, that it occurs “in the plantation area from north of Charleston to South Georgia, along the Gulf coast to the mouth of the Mississippi, and up the Mississippi and its tributaries along the bottomlands as far inland as Decatur” [Ala.].

1
John Dyneley Prince, in Brooklyn and New York,
American Speech
, Dec., 1934, p. 295, noted that on these levels it is sometimes broken into its component parts, so that
thoid
becomes
tho-id
. In the same way
toilet
becomes
to-ilet
. “This pronunciation,” he says, “is supposed to be refined.”

2
E. H. Sturtevant, in Linguistic Change; Chicago, 1917, p. 71, calls its
oi
a diphthong whose first element is “an abnormal vowel simi lar to German
ö
or French
eu
and whose second element is
i
.”

3
A correspondent calls my attention to the fact that the following distich is in John Trumbull’s M’Fingal, written between 1774 and 1782:
As Socrates of old at
first did
To aid philosophy get
hoisted
. But this leaves some questions unanswered. Did Trumbull give
hoisted
its correct pronunciation and so turn
first
into
foist?
Or did he think of it as
h’ist
, and so produce the impossible
f’ist?
In any case it is to be recalled that his rhymes were often very eccentric.

4
For example, by Mr. Barrows Mussey: private communication, June 15, 1936. Mr. Mussey says that his mother had a New York Dutch great-aunt who used
oi
for
er
regularly. He also says that in a novel of the 90s the dialect forms of
girl
and
pearl
were spelled
geuil
and
peuil
. Mr. George Weiss, Jr., of Richmond Hills, N. Y., tells me that in the early 30s one of the New York newspapers suggested that
goil
and
thoity-thoid
be abandoned for
guyl
and
thuyty-thuyd
, as more accurate.

5
Metropolitan
er, ir, ur, American Speech
, Feb., 1943, pp. 77–78.

1
Southern Speech, in Culture in the South, edited by W. T. Couch; Chapel Hill (N.C.), 1934, p. 608.

2
A Pronouncing Dictionary of American English; Springfield (Mass.), 1944, p. xl.

3
AL4, p. 368.

4
The question is discussed in Jewish Dialect and New York Dialect, by C. K. Thomas,
American Speech
, June, 1932, pp. 321–26; In Re Jewish Dialect and New York Dialect, by Robert Sonkin, the same, Feb., 1933, pp. 78–79, and Curiosities of Yiddish Literature, by A. A. Roback; Cambridge (Mass.), 1933, p. 49.

5
p. 367.

6
Soiving
the
Ersters, American Speech
, Feb., 1926, pp. 294–95.

1
Private communication, Oct. 26, 1945.

2
The Origin of a Dialect,
Freeman
, June 2. There is a quotation from this paper in AL4, p. 368.

3
Hypercorrect Forms in American English,
American Speech
, Oct., p. 169.

4
Curl
and
Coil
in New York City,
American Speech
, Dec., 1940, pp. 372–76.

1
Hugh Morrison, in New Yorkers Can’t Speak English,
American Mercury
, Sept., 1938, pp. 42–46, says that the New York soap-boxers, in quoting the Communist Manifesto, say
Woikus of de woild, unite!

2
But
poison
seems to offer an exception.

3
Here, of course, there is some competition from the common
ai
, as in
h’ist
(hoist).

4
The New York Lingo, New York
Times Magazine
, Oct. 10, 1943: “We write
lerrers
. We buy
buh-er
. We talk of the
innernational
crisis.”

5
Says Dermot Cavanagh in The
R
in New Yorkese,
Word Study
, Oct., 1941, p. 7 (reprinted from the New York
Times
): “New Yorkers employ the
r
-sound for euphony only. They drop it out where it isn’t needed, as in
fuh coat
, and leave it in where euphony commands, as in
furry animal
. When a consonant between words is needed, as in
raw egg
, the New Yorker slips in one of his surplus
r
’s and says
rawr egg
. Where there is already a consonant the New Yorker does not put in his
r
: he says
raw deal
.”

1
The Speech of New York, New York
Times
, July 12, 1936. This is a report of an investigation in Brooklyn, by the aforesaid Dr. Kennedy in association with William Temple and David Driscoll. They found the worst speech errors in Williamsburg and East Flatbush, and the least in Flatbush and Midwood. Bensonhurst, Borough Park, Brownsville, East New York and Bushwick lay between. More difficulties with
th
were found in East New York than anywhere else. Glottal stops were most frequent in Williamsburg.

2
Topics of the Times: Accents Across the Sea, New York
Times
, editorial page, Sept. 22, 1945. He was hanged Jan. 3, 1946.

3
pp. 108–11.

4
pp. 141–42 and 186–97. There is a section on The Local Vernacular in New York Panorama, the first volume of New York City: A Guide to the World’s Greatest Metropolis, prepared by the Federal Writers’ Project of the Works Progress Administration; New York, 1938, pp. 152–61, but in a review in the
New Republic
, Oct. 26, 1938, p. 340, Robert M. Coates denounced it for “devoting too much space to listing pseudo-Winchellisms and similar slang expressions and too little to the really absorbing peculiarities of New Yorkese and Brooklynese.” In Some Words From Irvin S. Cobb,
American Speech
, Feb., 1945, p. 75, Steven T. Byington discussed some Long Island locutions in a story by Cobb, but not a few of them,
e.g., loblolly
, a muddy spot, and
swivit
, a hurry, are found in other places by Wentworth. See also New Yorkers Can’t Speak English, by Hugh Morrison,
American Mercury
, Sept., 1938, pp. 42–46; Simple Language Guide to Brooklyn, New York
Times
, June 12, 1946, p. 29, and Brooklyn Primer, by J. F. Bender, New York
Times Magazine
, July 7, 1946, p. 14.

1
Journal of a Tour to North Carolina; edited by Lida Tunstall Rodman,
James Sprunt Historical Publications
, Vol. XVII, No. 2, pp. 1–45; Chapel Hill (N.C.), 1922. I am indebted for this to Miss Louise Hall, of Duke University.

2
Supplement I, pp. 208–10.

3
A North Carolina Word List, Vol. V, Part I, pp. 18–21. There was an earlier and briefer one, assembled by C. Alphonso Smith, in
Dialect Notes
, Vol. IV, Part V, 1916, pp. 343–44, but it was confined to student slang at the University of North Carolina.

4
Steadman explained this as follows: “The North Carolinians say that they had to climb over the backs of the Virginians to get at the enemy during the Civil War and that the tar on their heels gave the Virginians sore backs.” See the discussion of
tarheel
in Chapter X. Section 4.

5
A Word-List From Buncombe County, North Carolina, by Hugh C. Laughlin,
Publication of the American Dialect Society, No. 2;
Greensboro (N.C.), Nov., 1944, pp. 24–27; A Word-List From the Mountains of Kentucky and North Carolina, by Cratis D. Williams, the same, pp. 28–31; A Word-List From North Carolina, by Francis C. Hayes, the same, pp. 32–37; and A Word-List From Virginia and North Carolina, by George P. Wilson, the same, pp. 38–52.

6
A Word-List From Virginia and North Carolina, by C. M. Woodard,
Publication of the American Dialect Society, No. 6
, Nov., 1946, pp. 4–43. The North Carolina terms were heard in Pamlico county, 1900–10.

1
Supplement I, p. 184.

2
Early English Survivals on Hatteras Island,
University Magazine
(University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill), Feb., 1910, pp. 3–10.

3
See also A Bit of Elizabethan England in America, by Blanch N. Epler,
National Geographic Magazine
, Dec., 1933, and Marooned for 300 Years, by George E. Basler,
Holiday
, preview issue, 1945.

1
He read a paper on Dialect Areas in North Carolina at the meeting of the Linguistic Society of America in July, 1941, but it has not been published. Differences in time and pitch between the speech of a North Carolina girl and an Englishman using Oxford English were reported on by H. E. Atherton and Darrell L. Gregg in A Study of Dialect Differences,
American Speech
, Feb., 1929, pp. 216–23. They found that the girl spoke faster than the Englishman and showed less care in enunciation.

1
New England Pronunciations in Ohio, Vol. I, Part I, p. 17.

2
Western Reserve,
Dialect Notes
, Vol. IV, Part VI, pp. 386–404.

3
Western Reserve Terms, Vol. V, Part IV, pp. 122–23. In
Dialect Notes
, Vol. V, Part II, p. 76, there had been a commentary on his 1917 list by Arthur G. Brodeur.

4
Notes From Cincinnati, Vol. I, Part II, pp. 60–63.

5
Dialect Peculiarities in Southeastern Ohio,
Dialect Notes
, Vol. IV, Part V, 1916, pp. 339–42.

1
To these Mrs. R. H. Hoppin, of Boston (private communication, July 8, 1946), adds the following from Alliance, which is but thirty miles from the Pennsylvania border: the omission of the auxiliary, as in “My hair
needs
combed”;
kidder
for
kid
(possibly under the influence of the Ger.
kinder
);
unelse
for
unless
, and the use of
anymore
as in “I do that all the time
anymore
.”

2
Dr. William B. Bean, of Cincinnati (private communication, June 17, 1946), adds
jupe
, used to designate tuberculosis in southern Ohio and northern Kentucky. The patient is sometimes called a
juper
.

3
Maine Dialect in Ohio,
American Speech
, Feb., 1938, pp. 74–76.

4
Vanishing Expressions of the Maine Coast,
American Speech
, Dec., 1927, pp. 134–41, and More Notes on Maine Dialect, the same, Dec., 1929, pp. 118–31.

5
Not to be confused with Ohio State University, which is at Columbus.

6
Dialectal Peculiarities of Athens, Ohio,
American Speech
, Oct., 1945, pp. 232–33.

1
A Specimen of Ohio Speech,
Language Monographs
, No. VII, Dec., 1930, pp. 92–101. This was published in the Curme Volume of Linguistic Studies, brought out in honor of the seventieth birthday of Dr. George O. Curme, the distinguished grammarian.