New Yawk and N'Orleans

[Arnold M. Zwicky]

On Sep 15, 2005, at 6:38 AM, Geoff Nathan wrote:

> At 12:00 AM 9/15/2005, you wrote:
>> Very notable similarities between much N.O. and N.Y.C.
>> pronunciation are the parallel "r-dropping" and the relative lack
>> of diphthongization in N.O. compared with much of the Gulf South.
>
> I'm pretty sure Bill Labov doesn't follow this list, but in a
> plenary talk he gave to the International Conference on Historical
> Linguistics this summer at Madison he stated (and I think he had
> some contemporary newspaper research to back him up) that there was
> a large influx of lower class New Yorkers in the nineteenth
> century, and that was the origin of at least part of the phonology
> of New Orleans speech.  It was a really good paper about the nature
> of sound change and diffusion.  I just looked for it, and it's
> available on his website:...

ah, actual research!  great stuff.

my earlier objections were to seizing on a similarity and telling a
story that would make the similiarity not a coincidence; the middle-
school-teachers story was particularly silly.

arnold