New Jersey Dialects

[Wilson Gray]

On Oct 21, 2004, at 11:39 AM, Arnold M. Zwicky wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "Arnold M. Zwicky" <zwicky at CSLI.STANFORD.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: New Jersey Dialects
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> On Oct 20, 2004, at 10:05 PM, Laurence Horn wrote:
>
>> Just 'cause I'm curious--do the "Sundee", "Mondee", "Tuesdee" speakers
>> pronounce _(ice-cream) sundae_ as "sundee" too?
>
> i do, and so did the kids i grew up with.  i remember this because
> there once were tv ads that had the /de/ pronunciation, which struck us
> all as preposterous and worthy of mockery.  the day names had formal
> variants with (secondarily accented) /de/, but "sundae" had only /di/
> for us; /s^nde/ was *only* the day name.
>
> arnold
>

FWIW. the local pronunciation of "sundae" in St, Louis is (or was, when
I was a kid) [s^nd@]. Various reasons for this appeared in the local
newspapers from time to time, but they were all at the level of "Sunday
was considered to be too holy a day for its name to be applied to a
mere snack."

-Wilson