Heard on The Judges: weird coincidence

[Jonathan Lighter]

More likely from "multi" cultural.

  JL

Charles Doyle <cdoyle at UGA.EDU> wrote:
  ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Charles Doyle
Subject: Re: Heard on The Judges: weird coincidence
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We may have discussed here the fondness of youngish speakers for using "multiple" in place of "many" or "lots of"? (A point probably unrelated to the datum that Wilson reports!)

--Charlie
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---- Original message ----
>Date: Wed, 16 Apr 2008 14:01:10 -0400
>From: Wilson Gray

>
>Forty-ish white defendant:
>
>"There were _multi_ [m^ltai] people running up and down the stairs!"
>
>When I was A teenager in Saint Louis, "multi" was pronounced and used in exactly this way among the boys within our in-group. I.e., it was used by no more than ten guys, back in the day when words like "anti" and "ante" were still identical in pronunciation, and pronouncing such words as "anti", "semi," "multi," etc.,with [ai] was still considered a joke and not standard or, at least, ordinary.
>
>IAC, I hadn't heard "multi' used like that in about 55 years. Unfortunately, I hear "multi" pronounced like that all time, nowadays.
>
>-Wilson

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