"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.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
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?
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
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
More information about the Ads-l
mailing list