childhood rhymes

[Wilson Gray]

On Aug 1, 2004, at 1:09 PM, Douglas G. Wilson wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "Douglas G. Wilson" <douglas at NB.NET>
> Subject:      Re: childhood rhymes
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>
>> We always used these balls.  They're pink rubber and real bouncy.The
>> manufacturer's name, Spalding, is printed clearly on each ball, and
>> that's
>> what we called 'em: Spaldings.
>> This was in Manhattan in the '50s.
>>
>> I've never heard anybody use the word "spaldeen."
>
> "Spaldeen" appears in my RHUD. Newspaper search shows it from 1968
> (NYT).
> Supposedly the spelling reflects some people's (children's)
> pronunciation.
> I suppose a pronunciation like this is believable (was it what could be
> written "Spaldin'" perhaps?), but the standardization is odd: I don't
> find
> "spauldeen", "spaldene", etc. I suppose that the word was popularized
> by
> some writer who invented the spelling "spaldeen" to express somebody's
> childhood recollections. Possibly the spelling is modeled on
> "spalpeen"?
>
> -- Doug Wilson
>

There are some people who normally pronounce "-ing" as "-een." The
best-known such person is probably Katie Kouric. She's from (West?)
Virginia, I believe. But I don't think that it's necessarily a feature
of a regional dialect. Back in Saint Louis in the middle '50's, I had a
friend - a black male in his middle teens - who not only pronounced
"-ing" as "-een," but also he pronounced "-ug" as "-ung." He once told
me a story about feeling someone tugging at his sleeve. Of course, I
heard this as "... felt a girl *TUNGeen* at my sleeve." As a
consequence, I had no idea what he was talking about. Why would anyone
of whatever sexual orientation want to tongue at some total stranger's
sleeve? I still can't get the picture out of my mind. This guy was half
of a set of fraternal twins, but his brother's speech exhibited neither
of these features.

-Wilson Gray