East Texas blacks shake hands with Oxford University

[Wilson Gray]

On Jul 24, 2004, at 9:29 AM, Jonathon Green wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Jonathon Green <slang at ABECEDARY.NET>
> Subject:      Re: East Texas blacks shake hands with Oxford University
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>
> On Sat, 24 Jul 2004 06:09:17 -0700, Jonathan Lighter
> <wuxxmupp2000 at YAHOO.COM> wrote:
>
>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
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>> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> Poster:       Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at YAHOO.COM>
>> Subject:      Re: East Texas blacks shake hands with Oxford University
>> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>> ---------
>>
>> Supposedly "plunk/plonk" originated in World War I.  British and
>> American soldiers both tended to pronounce "vin blanc" as something
>> like
>> "van blunc."
>>
>> Wilson, yours is the first US example of "plunk" I have seen, though
>> syn. "pluck" has been reported once or twice.
>>
>> JL
>
> I'm not sure about 'plunk' at Oxford. Not in my time - 1966-9. Plonk,
> no
> doubt and I remember a cheap wine, c. 1980, which labelled itself
> 'Plonque'. I just wonder whether what Wilson heard as 'plunk' was
> perhaps
> an upper/upper-middle class UK pronuinciation of plonk.
>
> Jonathon Green


I've actually considered this possibility myself: that my friend simply
misheard my American pronunciation of "plonk" and I, in turn, misheard
his Oxonian pronunciation of the same word. "Two countries separated by
the same language" or some such, as someone once said. It's like when
you ask a Dutch speaker to say "bet" and you hear "bat." But, if you
ask him to say "bat," you hear
"bet." Of course, the Dutchman has used the same vowel in both cases.
But, when this sound is filtered through the expectations of the
(American-)English ear, confusion results and you think you're hearing
the expected US-English vowels, but with their "polarity," as it were,
reversed.

In any case, the similarity between E TX BE "plunk" and Oxonian "plonk"
is quite surprising. Which leads me to a discussion of -onk vs. -unk in
BE that I'll get into in the near future, I hope.

-Wilson Gray

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