A possibility?

Wilson Gray wilson.gray at RCN.COM
Thu Oct 28 14:26:34 UTC 2004


Down home in East Texas, black people say, "I ain't got ['nae at n]",
whereas I would expect to hear, "I ain't got [nOn]," wherein "O" is
approximately the "aw" of "dawn." Other words with stressed /^n/ have
the expected pronunciation: fun  one  done  run  gun   bun  sun etc.
However, after examining "nary," in DARE, it has occurred to me that
people are perhaps not pronouncing "none" with very strange phonetics.
Rather, they're saying "I ain't got nary one."

People also say. "I ain't got [nae@'n^dn]" instead of "I ain't got no
more." That could be "I ain't got nary another one."

-Wilson Gray



More information about the Ads-l mailing list