"Gwine"

[Alan Baragona]

It might be worth pointing out that Alexander Pope and other 18th-century
writers rhyme words like "join" and "pine," so it's perfectly possible that
Southern Americans with British heritage would have pronounced <oi> as [ai]
and passed this pronunciation along to their slaves.

----- Original Message -----
From: "James A. Landau" <JJJRLandau at AOL.COM>
To: <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
Sent: Monday, February 28, 2005 11:08 AM
Subject: Re: "Gwine"


> ---------------------- Information from the mail
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "James A. Landau" <JJJRLandau at AOL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: "Gwine"
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------
-----
>
> "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
>