Was New Jersey Dialects, now turned south

[Dennis R. Preston]

>Here's a fun fact. In the Southern Shift (with English viewed
>globally, if I may), the /ey/ vowel moves into the /ay/ position.
>(Member, in the US South /ay/ done moved front and monophthongized
>itsef).

If a speaker had secondary stress on weekday names, they would surely
shift /dey/ to /day/, and, south of England, Strain, South African,
and others do. US southerners do not, I suspect, since most have
weakened the stress and raised the weakened /ey/ to and /i/-like
position before the operation of the Southern Shift rule. When
southern US speakers restress 'day' (or have never lost it, as in
'good day' (an admittedly little-used greeting the the US south), the
/ey/ does indeed surface as /ay/.

dInIs


>On Oct 21, 2004, at 6:38 AM, David Bowie asked, about /di/ vs. /de/ in
>day names:
>
>>Which of these is older, i'm wondering--i just looked in Kenyon &
>>Knott and
>>found *only* the /i/ pronunciation, and Clement Wood's 1936 rhyming
>>dictionary also has *only* the /i/ pronunciation. Is /e/ a reading
>>pronunciation that's naturalized?
>
>it's pretty much guaranteed that the /de/ pronunciation is older, since
>the day names were, after all, originally compounds with "day" /de/ as
>the second element.  and it at least used to be the case that the /de/
>pronunciation was hugely the dominant one in the u.k., so that when i
>lived there, people would look startled at my /di/ pronunciations
>(which i quickly learned to formal-ize to /de/).
>
>but the observation about kenyon & knott and wood is very interesting.
>it could well have been that the /di/ pronunciation pretty much swept
>the u.s. by the early 20th century, but was then abandoned in favor of
>the reading pronunciation, which then simply became the norm in some
>places and groups.  sort of like "often" with a /t/.
>
>arnold


--
Dennis R. Preston
University Distinguished Professor
Department of Linguistics and Germanic, Slavic,
        Asian and African Languages
Wells Hall A-740
Michigan State University
East Lansing, MI 48824-1027 USA
Office: (517) 353-0740
Fax: (517) 432-2736