greaser

[Laurence Horn]

At 10:56 AM -0400 7/28/05, sagehen wrote:
>  >
>>Thanks, Ben.
>>So, that the speaker was white and that "gwine" hasn't always been
>>regarded as a peculiarity of Negro dialect is a distinct possibility.
>>"Veddy interesting," as they used to say on Laugh-In.
>>
>>-Wilson
>~~~~~~~~
>My first  thought was /Irish/, triggered by the "jints" but then I'd have
>expected "divil," so that didn't work.  Then I briefly wondered,  /written
>testimony?/  but the gross spelling inconsistencies made that unlikely.
>/Inept eye dialect/ is my current notion, which makes me think it
>unreliable as a reference for "gwine."
>Using "rite" and "strait" and "cum" suggest simply plugging in conventional
>markers to indicate uneducated speech, since they have no phonemic
>advantage.
>A. Murie

Well, they also have the virtue of disambiguation...

Larry