A nursery rhyme

[Beverly Flanigan]

At 08:41 PM 7/20/2004 -0400, you wrote:
>On Jul 20, 2004, at 4:37 PM, Beverly Flanigan wrote:
>
>>---------------------- Information from the mail header
>>-----------------------
>>Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>>Poster:       Beverly Flanigan <flanigan at OHIOU.EDU>
>>Subject:      Re: A nursery rhyme
>>-----------------------------------------------------------------------
>>--------
>>
>>At 04:12 PM 7/20/2004 -0400, you wrote:
>>>On Tue, 20 Jul 2004, Barbara Need wrote:
>>>
>>>>>There was a little girl
>>>>>And she had a little curl
>>>>>Right in the middle of her forehead.
>>>>>When she was good, she was very, very good.
>>>>>But when she was bad, she was horehead?/hoarhead?/whorehead? ...?
>>>>>
>>>>>-Wilson Gray
>>>>
>>>>Except that forehead "should" be (used to be) pronounced something
>>>>like forid (and therefore rhymed with horrid).
>>>
>>><Should be?> No - IS. I have always pronounced forehead to rhyme
>>>w/horrid. (se TX, AR, MO, LA, London, TX, TN)
>>>
>>>Bethany
>>
>>Not me.  I've always said fore-head (MN, MO, IN, OH).  But I'm
>>reminded of
>>Bloomfield's article on "Literate and Illiterate Speech" (Dale Coye
>>reminded me of it too), where he writes, on the last page, "Similarly,
>>'forrid' is preferred to the logically more explicable 'fore-head'."
>>This
>>is in the context of "preferring" 'You had better do it' over 'You
>>ought
>>better (to) do it', "although the latter [ought better] accords with
>>the
>>general forms of our syntax."  He also says "'I dove' is not so good
>>as 'I
>>dived', 'I ain't' not so good as 'I'm not'" in terms of acceptability.
>>  He's acknowledging the vagaries of "preference," of course, in the
>>context of "good and bad" Menomini.  But when my students read this,
>>they're always puzzled by 'forrid'--who on earth says that, they ask.
>
>I, of course, say "forrid." However, on the other hand, who on earth
>says, or even writes, "You ought better (to) do it," nowadays? And,
>FWIW, in BE, The past of "You/you'd/you had/ better do it" is "You
>better had done it."
>
>-Wilson Gray

That's Bloomfield's point, of course:  Who dictates what's "good" and "bad"?
BTW, if people no longer know this article, it appeared in Vol. 2 of
_American Speech_, in 1927 (no, I wasn't alive then).  I have my
Sociolinguistics class read it every year.