"The Battle [and bottle] of Bataan"

[Laurence Horn]

On Jan 17, 2013, at 5:07 PM, Wilson Gray wrote:

> On Mon, Jan 14, 2013 at 3:31 PM, W Brewer <brewerwa at gmail.com> wrote:
>> WB:  Probably sociolectal variation. In the '70s & '80s, I recall hearing
>> _Iran_ pronounced [ear-'rAHn] and pernounced ['eye-'raen]; [ear'rock] vs.
>> [eye-'raek].
>
> Back in the '70's, Stevie Wonder cut a side which opens with him
> trying to pick up a chick with a stunning display of his command of
> foreign tongues. In the course of his rap, he mentions both "Eye-Ran"
> and "Eye-Rack."

…and then there was "Eye-talian", maybe even more common back then (and, I always figured, equally insulting and/or ignorant) just based on the relative prevalence of Italian vs. Iraqi and Iranian restaurants.  Not that there's anything wrong with "Eye-talics".

LH

> At the time, those pronunciations struck me as so
> ignorant, especially in the context of displaying one's supposed
> polyglossy, that I found them side-splittingly comic.
>
> Nowadays, these pronunciations are so commonplace that they strike me
> as being completely ordinary and "correct."
>
> Youneverknow.
>
> --
> -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
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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