Heard on Springer: _strewn_ [stroUn]

Wilson Gray hwgray at GMAIL.COM
Thu Aug 25 17:09:55 UTC 2011


Mid-twenty-ish, white male speaker:

"I come home and all of my cosmetics [Springer, remember?] are
_strewn_ [stroUn] all over the place …!"


This is the first time that I've heard this pronunciation by anyone
not a black person in or from Marshall, TX. I think! Of course, as
long as I was unaware of any other possible pronunciation, use of this
pronunciation by other people wouldn't have registered. And, IME,
_strew[n]_, regardless of pronunciation, don't be falling trippingly
from no whole lot of tongues. So,

Youneverknow.


I've long had the feeling that, in some cases, _done_ is the ghost of
_have done_. But I couldn't recall with any certainty that I'd ever
heard the "full" form used, except in my own mind. Here of late,
though, I've heard it many times from the lips both of black speakers
and of white speakers on the Springer Show, as in:

"That's a damn *lie*! I _*have*_ done did that!"

"She's right. _I've_ done called her that numerous of times."


BTW, does anyone else have the impression that stuff comes and goes?
At one time, the airwaves were swamped with people saying
"forMIDable." Then, it just went away. Now, I've begun to hear it
again, from time to time, as FORmidable," the same pronunciation as
was used, IIRC, before the word had its fifteen minutes of fame.

--
-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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