Hello, I have a question

[Douglas G. Wilson]

>I am doing a translation work in Japan, and I was told by my colleague
>that in the southern part of the United States, people use"donky" instead
>of "donkey."

"Donky" is an obsolete spelling variant of "donkey". I find it used as an
alternative to "donkey" up to about 1870. It is shown as an alternative
spelling in the Century Dictionary (Web) from 1889. Nowadays, I would
regard it as presumptively a spelling ERROR (although perhaps a frequent
one), and not regional. Certainly it is not a standard or usual spelling
today. There is some variation in pronunciation /dONki/, /daNki/, /dVNki/
[i.e., with IPA reversed-c, italic-a, inverted-v] but I think the spelling
is universally "donkey", north or south, east or west.

-- Doug Wilson