Green mile; Vietnamese cooking

[Kenneth Setzer]

Also of interest in the movie is the pronunciation of the rhotic vowel, as in "bird." Many characters say it as the diphthong in "Boyd." As far as I understood, besides
in New York (with a different phonological distribution), this pronunciation only happened in New Orleans. This would explain the mention of Louisiana in the film, but
I wonder if this pronunciation is known to have occurred outside New Orleans, since the prison in the movie is WAY outside of any city.

Bapopik at AOL.COM wrote:

> GREEN MILE
>
>    "Green mile" supposedly slang for the "last mile" walked before death row.
>    A Dow Jones check shows no hits outside of Stephen King.  I haven't read the book (the movie is due out soon).  Did King make up "the green mile"?
>    The drama takes place in the south in 1932.  What does King know about this dialect?  Did he get it right in the novel?
>
> --------------------------------------------------------
> VIETNAMESE COOKING
>
>    I've been looking into this.  The one essential element is the fish sauce.
>
> NUOC MAM--the first Dow Jones hit appears to be the New York Times, 12 September 1977, pg. 17, col. 1, "nuoc mam sauce, sine qua non of Vietnamese cuisine."
>
> NUOC CHAM--the Globe & Mail, 23 September 1981, pg. SB2, "Nuoc cham is a sauce used extensively in Vietnamese cooking and is basically a distillation of anchovies."