Teen Lingo site

[Wilson Gray]

On Jan 31, 2005, at 1:00 AM, Douglas G. Wilson wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "Douglas G. Wilson" <douglas at NB.NET>
> Subject:      Re: Teen Lingo site
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>> .... Some of the terms are about seventy years old, others
>> are terms so new that, if I hadn't read the list, I wouldn't have a
>> clue.
>>>
>>> http://www.thesource4ym.com/teenlingo/index.asp
>
> I like "selling woof tickets". It used to be "wolf", didn't it?
>
> -- Doug Wilson
>

Exactly. It still is, as far as i'm concerned. "Wolf" is pronounced
[wUf], but "woof" is pronounced [wuf]. People get thrown off by
pseudo-phonetic spellings. I've noticed that the BE/Southern
pronunciation of "whip, which used to be spelled "whup," by outsiders,
is now more and more often being spelled "whoop," as in, "open a can of
whoop-ass." Given that I pronounce "whoop" as "hoop," (cf. the '50's
jump-blues song, "Whooping and Hollering," pronounced as though spelled
"Hoopin 'n' Hollin," for the old-school black pronunciation and there's
whooping [hupiN] cough, a common disease of my childhood now making a
comeback, as an example of the old-school standard pronunciation), I'd
much rather see the standard spelling used: "open a can of whip-ass."

-Wilson Gray