"di?nt" (with glottal stop)

[Alan Baragona]

I have always used this glottal stop pronunciation, not only in "didn't" but
in "isn't" in place of the [z].  I'm white, born and brought up in urban
North Carolina, but the rest of my family is from New Jersey.
I remember a childhood friend, an Air Force brat who had lived abroad,
remarking that he had never heard anyone pronounce <isn't> [i?nt].  It is
not particularly a North Carolina feature, so I think I got it from my
family.

Alan Baragona

----- Original Message -----
From: "Alice Faber" <faber at HASKINS.YALE.EDU>
To: <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
Sent: Monday, November 15, 2004 12:38 AM
Subject: Re: "di?nt" (with glottal stop)


> ---------------------- Information from the mail
header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Alice Faber <faber at HASKINS.YALE.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: "di?nt" (with glottal stop)
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------
-----
>
> --On Sunday, November 14, 2004 10:57 PM -0500 "Mark A. Mandel"
> <mamandel at LDC.UPENN.EDU> wrote:
>
> > A question from a friend in Boston:
> >
> > ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> >
> > I was on the Green Line, and there were a couple of African-American
> > teenage girls talking loudly to one another (they were about twenty feet
> > away, almost out of sight, but I could hear every word they said).
> >
> > And it occurred to me as I was listening that there's a linguistic
> > artifact that I've only heard from urban African-Americans my age or
> > younger, mostly girls.  It's a sort of glottal stop used in place of t
or
> > d; eg. di-unt instead of didn't.  Do you know where this might have come
> > from?
> >
> > =====================
> >
> > -- Mark
> > [This text prepared with Dragon NaturallySpeaking.]
>
> I've heard this often from callers to NY sports talk radio who have no
> overt AAVE phonology (other than this, if it *is* AAVE).
>
> --
> Alice Faber
> afaber at panix.com