wheel barrels?

[Wilson Gray]

On Aug 11, 2004, at 8:26 AM, Bethany K. Dumas wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "Bethany K. Dumas" <dumasb at UTK.EDU>
> Subject:      wheel barrels?
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
> --------
>
> I've heard <wheel barrel>, but I do not recall SEEING it before. This
> is from
> a message board on Yahoo!
> Finance:
>
> Wait until the Bonus Plan is announced. They will be using wheel
> barrels to
> take their cash home.
>
>
> Bethany
>

I've not only heard it, but I've also said it. In writing? No. When I
was a child, I interpreted East-Texas BE "cow" and "wheelbauh" (that's
all the closer that I can get [wasn't this formation fairly common at
one time?] without phonetic symbols; a = ash, uh = shwa) as "cowl" and
"wheelbarrel." But, as soon as I learned to read, I switched to the
standard pronunciations. Oddly enough, when I first heard "Motrin," I
heard it as "mole-trin." On the other hand, I had a problem teaching a
white Army buddy to say "cool" the way blacks said it because he
couldn't hear the final "l." He kept saying "coooo," using an overlong
[u].

-Wilson Gray