"Gwine"

James A. Landau JJJRLandau at AOL.COM
Mon Feb 28 16:08:22 UTC 2005


"gwine" appears in Stephen Collins Foster's "Camptown Races":
     "Gwine to run all night
       Gwine to run all day..."

During the Civil War there was a song, or perhaps jingle, known as "Jine the
Cavalry".  It was, I believe, popular among Jeb Stuart's Confederate cavalry.
Note that in this case is is /oin/ rather than /oing/ that is rendered /ine/.

I have no further evidence whatsoever, but the existence of these two
phonetic items in mid-Nineteenth Century Southern (or pseudo-Southern) songs suggests
that /oin/ --> /ine/ was fairly common among Southerners (whites?  blacks?),
or perhaps was merely a common convention among Southern song-writers.

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A few days ago Wilson Gray quoted the following two-liner:
     Square: Crosstown bus pass this way?
     Hipster: Doo-dah

Stephen Collins Foster is hip?

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Off-topic:

Is it only in New Jersey, or is it a worldwide phenomenon amongst the
English-language press, that the Pope is said to have had a "tracheotomy" rather than
a "tracheostomy"?

The Philadelphia Inquirer recently, discussing a sex scandal in the
Pennsylvania State Police, referred in a sub-head to "the scandalized State Police".

A karaoke version of "Impossible Dream" contains the following transcription
error, which rather reverses the meaning:
       To fight for the right
       Without question or cause

An African-American seventh grader informs me that natives of sub-Saharan
Africa should be referred to not as "blacks" but as "African-Americans."

           - James A. Landau



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