polka(dot) pronunciation?

[Mark Odegard]

I grew up in the SF Bay Area (East Bay, Oakland, Piedmont and Alameda, with
connnections to Concord, Paradise, and that place up near Redding where a
sofa was a 'chesterfield'). The usual accent back then (1960s) was poke-uh,
for all inflections and meanings. You danced the poke-uh wearing poke-uh
dotted costumes. I don't remember polka-dotted polka-queens from that late
70s Cedar Rapids, IA TV show which was essentially a 'polka party',
accordians and all (yes, we moved to Iowa); rather, they wore fluffy chiffon
things, and their partners tended towards cowboy.

Yeah. Poke Street. (Polk street is one block west of and parallel to Van
Ness Avenue).


>From: Indigo Som
>
> >the "polka" in "polka dot" is (nowadays) usually not pronounced the same
>as
> >the "polka" applied to the dance. I find multiple examples on the Web of
> >"poker dot" and "poke a dot" in the sense of "polka dot" -- just
>misspellings?
>
>I would like to know what the story is w/ these pronunciations! My friends
>in high school were always teasing me for pronouncing the L in Polk Street
>(San Francisco), polkadot & dancing the polka. They insisted that it was
>supposed to be pronounced "poke street", "poke-a-dot" and dancing the
>"poke-a". I still remember this because it remains an unsolved mystery for
>me -- after all, we all grew up in the same place. I could maybe chalk it
>up to my mother being from Hong Kong originally -- do the British include
>the L?
>
>Indigo Som
>indigo at well.com
>
>Every freckle on my face is where it's supposed to be -- India Arie

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