yea/ yeah

[Beverly Flanigan]

At 04:33 PM 5/3/2007, you wrote:
>My Minnesota 'yeah' is also close to German/Scandinavian 'Ja' (though
>modern Norwegian/Swedish is backer, as is maybe German?).  But my Ohio
>son's 'yeah' is glided [jE @], much to my annoyance. . . .  (Just
>kidding.  He laughs at my "Are you coming with?" so we're even.)

    Beverly Flanigan

>  ~~~~~~~~
>Interesting!  Before I read this post, but while catching up on this thread
>I  stopped to think for a minute about my own "yeah" & realized (rather to
>my surprise) that my "yeah" tends strongly toward the German "Ja!" in some
>of its functions.
>  I also realized that  my pronunciation varies a lot depending on how I'm
>using it.  I don't just mean register, which, of course, entails a lot of
>variability in pronunciation.  I wonder if others find the same is true for
>them.........?
>  [I am almost entirely of British Isles extraction going back to before the
>American Revolution & no one in my family  speaks German except as  a
>language student.]
>That strong antipathy toward anything German was a lot like the "freedom
>fries" of embarassingly recent memory.  Lots of things got targeted as too
>Teutonic during WWI & many underwent name changes or worse.
>AM
>
>  ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>W stands for >:<  War ____Waste___Wiretaps____Witchhunts  >:<
>^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>
>------------------------------------------------------------
>The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org