duke and dook

[Dennis R. Preston]

He (Dick Vitale) is most definitely not a Detroiter (not on
linguistic evidence at any rate). His open oh raising (so that
'caught' sounds like 'coat' or even 'coot') is much more typical of
NYC-area speech.

dInIs

PS: He is probably also of souther Italian origins since he has lost
the last vowel of his name.

>At 9:19 AM -0400 9/23/04, RonButters at AOL.COM wrote:
>>In a message dated 9/23/04 12:25:20 AM, laurence.horn at YALE.EDU writes:
>>
>>>  What of "Dukies", though?  I've heard Dick Vitale refer to Dukies
>>>  3,578 times, and it was ['dukiz] each time, but I don't know if
>>>  that's a fact about Dick Vitale or about Dukies.
>>>
>>
>>I don't suppose that Dick Vitale is a southerner? (Who IS Dick Vitale,
>>anyway?)
>
>Dick Vitale, who tends to refer to himself as Dickie V., is a hyper,
>fast- and loud-talking former basketball coach who has been a
>(college) basketball announcer--or, as he characterizes himself,
>"college basketball's top analyst and ambassador"--for the last
>couple of decades.  He's definitely not a southerner.  My
>recollection was that he's from Detroit, but the web-based info
>suggests he actually hails from East Rutherford, NJ (presumably in
>the shadow-to-be of the Meadowlands Sports Complex).  Linguistically,
>he's responsible for popularizing such argot as "diaper dandy" (for
>freshman stars) and "PTPer" (for "prime-time players"), and purveying
>other trademark cliches ("Awesome, baby!").
>
>>At any rate, since Duke has been invaded by Yankees (since about 1965) the
>>old distinction between "Duke" and "dook" has pretty much disappeared. There
>>was a day when wicked students from Chapel Hill used to drive over
>>to Duke and
>>paint "dook" on the campus bridge--a reference to (1) the Yankee
>>pronunciation
>>of "Duke" and (2) the distinction between "Duke" (the famaily name,
>>pronounced [dyuk] by the locals) and "dookie" (then a local
>>euphemistic alternative to
>>'caa-caa'). Those days are no more.
>
>While Dickie V uses the non-palatalized version of "Dook", I agree
>with Alice in the claim that even those who say [djuk] would use
>[dukiz] derisively.  What I don't know is whether this is prompted by
>the association with the barbarian non-palatalizing Yankees, with the
>scatological euphemism, neither, or both.
>
>larry