The magistrate said "Merry", the defendant said "Mary"

[Wilson Gray]

Down home, it actualy is "May-rih." No off-glide before a liquid.
Prolly why whites think that blacks say "coo', whereas blacks know
that whites say "coo-wul."

'Course, that was fifty years ago. I hear lots of black people saying
"coo-wul," nowadays. Still listening for the first white person to say
"cool" without the off-glide, though.

OTOH, I  hear white people on the Springer Show using "ain't," as in,
"I ain't say I loved him!" This use of "ain't" for "didn't" has been
very common in BE for a couple of dekkids and more.

Just heard a fifty-ish, black male speaker use "uh-ruh, uh-ruh" [?^
r^] [?^ r^]. As Ron and a few others may recall, the use of this as a
space-filler was discussed a while ago WRT to the old, pswaydo-Western
song, Long, Tall Texan, e.g.: "Uh-ruh, uh-ruh, is that cho hawss?"

Also just heard "nary a one" [n&@n] from a twenty-ish, black female:
"He ain't show me nary a one that looked like I aksed him to!"
Unfortunately, there was no clue as to whether the speaker was from E
TX or not.

-Wilson

On Fri, Jun 11, 2010 at 9:31 AM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: The magistrate said "Merry", the defendant said "Mary"
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> At 1:39 AM -0400 6/11/10, Wilson Gray wrote:
>>On Wed, Jun 9, 2010 at 8:02 PM, David Wake <dwake at stanfordalumni.org> wrote:
>>>  many speakers in the East Coast and in the South do not have the
>>>  complete merger.
>>>
>>In the Southern BE of Marshall, TX, It's
>>
>>Mary [merI], merry [mErI], marry [m&rI]
>
> Pretty much the same for my NYC dialect, except that
> (i) my final unstressed vowel is [i], and
> (ii) I've never been quite sure how to represent that first one;
> "Mary" is distinct from "merry" and "marry", which are pretty clearly
> as Wilson transcribes them, but she isn't really "May-ree" either (as
> in "maybe" with an r), given the r-coloring of the /e/ vowel.
>
> LH
>
>>
>>But, in Saint BE, it's
>>
>>Mary, merry [mEri], marry [m&ri]
>>
>
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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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