"eye dialect"

[Laurence Horn]

At 9:20 PM -0400 4/26/99, Jesse T Sheidlower wrote:
>
>"Eye dialect" refers to nonstandard spellings used to indicate
>_standard_ pronunciations, where only the spelling (but not the
>pronunciations thus represented) indicates that the speakers
>are uneducated or speak nonstandard dialects. Examples are _uv_
>for "of"; _enuff_ for "enough"; or _wimmin_ for "women." In
>each case these spellings reflect the usual pronunciation.
>
>Jesse Sheidlower
>Random House
><jester at panix.com>

And of course "wuz" as in "We wuz robbed", as if all us ed-ee-cated folks
pronounced it properly as [was].

Larry