"di?nt" (with glottal stop)

[Beverly Flanigan]

As Wilson knows, I lived in St. Louis for 10 years (in the '60s), but alas,
I was so cocooned by St. Louis U and Wash U (as we called it) that I didn't
really tune into the local dialect(s).   But I do recall "No I never" from
somewhere during that era.  I was struck by my distant cousins' use of
"sody pop" on the other side of the river, in Collinsville, but I don't
recall "youse" (though my Baltimore in-laws used it all the time).  A
colleague's wife here in Athens but originally from St. Louis has the
"for/far" homophony (or maybe reversal? I'll listen again).  Now Labov
claims St. Louis is a "corridor" extending the Northern Cities Shift
southward (maybe to Cincinnati too), but it wasn't back in the old days!

At 04:02 PM 11/16/2004, you wrote:
>On Nov 16, 2004, at 3:13 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: "di?nt" (with glottal stop)
>>-----------------------------------------------------------------------
>>--------
>>
>>This deleted tap [dInt]
>
>This pronunciation was used by white kids in St. Louis, back in the
>day. These kids would now, as is your humble correspondent, be
>approaching their 70's all too quickly. BTW, what about "no I never,"
>used by these same white no-longer-kids, as opposed to the "no I
>didn't" used by us coloreds? Is/was that widespread? And how about the
>use of "youse" by white kids in St. Louis in my day, when everyone
>claimed that this usage was peculiar to Brooklyn, NY? St. Louis is a
>kind of Rodney Dangerfield of dialectology. It don't get no respect.
>
>-Wilson Gray
>
>>  or [dIn?] is what I hear in my nieces in Minnesota,
>>and I assume it's widespread.  I glottalize intervocalically, as do
>>most
>>people I know here in Ohio.  Does anyone say [dIDnt] except perhaps in
>>formal speech?  (D = flap, n is syllabic.)
>>
>>At 01:14 AM 11/16/2004, Zwicky wrote:
>>
>>>just a warning...  the spelling <di'nt> (or similar things) is often
>>>used to code a pronunciation in which the intervocalic voiced tap is
>>>simply deleted.  not the same thing as a pronunciation with an
>>>intervocalic glottalish bit.
>>>
>>>i suspect that ben zimmer's examples include some with an intervocalic
>>>glottal stop and some with no intervocalic consonant at all.  this is
>>>not to deny that some of them have glottal stops, possibly from a
>>>catchphrase.
>>>
>>>arnold