hooey

[Jonathan Lighter]

"Dennis R. Preston" <preston at MSU.EDU> wrote:
---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: "Dennis R. Preston"

Subject: Re: hooey
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

There is also the surprise or amazement "Hooooeee" in AmerEng
(Hooooeeee; look at the size of that sumbitch.')). It made an old
country song ('Hoooeeeee, it was the Tennessee Ghost,' sung by
Tennessee Enie Ford?) very popular in Poland.

Chuj (as it is spelled in Polish) is a very good East-West dialect
test. The /ch/ of Eastern Polish preserves a [x] pronunciation, and
is distinct from /h/, but the contrast is lost in Western Polish, and
one can even see badly spelled graffiti - "huj" in public places
alongside the more elegantly spelled "chuj." In the East, of course,
where the phoneme is intact, it is always "chuj."

dInIs





>Here is "khuy", in the expression "khuy voyne" ("f*ck war" or so) on the
>famous T-shirts of the "Russian teen faux-lesbian" singing duo Tatu.
>Supposedly these T-shirts appeared on US TV, through oversight and/or
>ignorance of Russian.
>
>http://taty-tatu.org/breve.php3?id_breve=6
>
>-- Doug Wilson


--
Dennis R. Preston
University Distinguished Professor of Linguistics
Department of Linguistics and Germanic, Slavic, Asian, and African Languages
A-740 Wells Hall
Michigan State University
East Lansing, MI 48824
Phone: (517) 432-3099
Fax: (517) 432-2736
preston at msu.edu


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