"Le-a"

[Wilson Gray]

On Thu, Jul 2, 2009 at 10:15 AM, Laurence Horn<laurence.horn at yale.edu> wrote:
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> Sender: Â  Â  Â  American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster: Â  Â  Â  Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> Subject: Â  Â  Â Re: "Le-a"
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> At 3:16 AM -0400 7/2/09, Wilson Gray wrote:
>>
>>
>>BTW, everybody recalls Byron De La Beckwith, right? In whose name "De
>>La" was a middle name pronounced "DEE lay"? Wal, the name of the
>>letter "a" is "ay," I reckon.
>>
>>-Wilson
>
> A prosecutor (and/or assistant DA) in Scott Turow's _Presumed
> Innocent_ is named De La Guardia, and is regularly referred to (we're
> told) as "Delay Guardia" (DEE-lay Guardia in the movie version), but
> that's because he was never ready to proceed and always looking for
> excuses to ask for continuances in his cases. Â Proves the point, I
> suppose.
>
> LH
>

You reckon?

Lest you be thrown off, in the relevant dialect, when "You reckon?" is
used like this, it's no more than rhetorical noise indicating that the
listener has heard your comment and has no reason to doubt, or, at
least, no reason to care about, its truth and calls for no response on
your part, though yu could say "Yep," if you were so inclined.. But if
*you* had said, "Proves the point, I reckon," my asking "You reckon?"
too would sound like I was actually questioning your assertion: "You
really think that? Well, I declare!" So, I'd just grunt "Unh" or some
such noise.

-Wilson
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--
-Wilson
–––
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die"---a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-----
-Mark Twain

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