Query: women > wimming

[Rachel Shuttlesworth]

My great-grandparents (rural Alabamians, born before 1920) said
"chicking" instead of "chicken" whenever the preacher came to eat. A
case of the same hypercorrection, I would think.
Rachel

RonButters at AOL.COM wrote:

>---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
>Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>Poster:       RonButters at AOL.COM
>Subject:      Query: women > wimming
>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>I have a videotape from a 1961 press conference in which a Lake Charles, LA,
>sherriff pronounces "women" with a final velar nasal and then corrects
>himself. In general in this press conference, he pronounces "-ing" with a velar
>nasal, and there are other indications of formality as well.
>
>Am I right in concluding that the "wimming" pronunciation is a
>hypercorrection occassioned by the sherriff's self-conscious of the "-ing" pronunciation?
>
>

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Rachel E. Shuttlesworth
CLIR Post-Doctoral Fellow
University of Alabama Libraries
Box 870266, Tuscaloosa, Alabama 35487-0266
Office: 205.348.4655/ Fax:205.348.8833
rachel.e.shuttlesworth at ua.edu