greaser

[sagehen]

>On Jul 28, 2005, at 12:51 AM, Benjamin Zimmer wrote:
>
>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>> -----------------------
>> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> Poster:       Benjamin Zimmer <bgzimmer at RCI.RUTGERS.EDU>
>> Subject:      Re: greaser
>> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
>> --------
>>
>> On Wed, 27 Jul 2005 22:14:46 -0400, Wilson Gray <wilson.gray at RCN.COM>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> On Jul 27, 2005, at 6:06 PM, Benjamin Zimmer wrote:
>>>
>>>> -----
>>>> The Living Age, Volume 14, Issue 176, Sep. 25, 1847
>>>> "The Battle of Monterey", p. 619/2
>>>>
>>>> Perhaps I did feel a little weak in the jints when I seed the
>>>> officers
>>>> unbuttonin their shirt collars, and the men throwin away their
>>>> canteens
>>>> and haversacks, as they was marchin rite strait up to them ar works,
>>>> whar the greasers was waitin for us, every devil with his gun pinted
>>>> and his finger on the trigger; I know'd they was
>>>
>>>> gwine
>>>
>>>> to let us have it, and I felt monstrous uneasy till it cum.
>>>>
>>>> http://cdl.library.cornell.edu/cgi-bin/moa/pageviewer?
>>>> frames=1&coll=moa&view=50&root=%2Fmoa%2Flivn%2Flivn0014%2F&tif=00625.
>>>> TIF
>>>> -----
>>>
>>> Does this mean that "gwine" was once a feature of at least one dialect
>>> of European-American English? Or was the speaker black?
>>
>> The speaker is described simply as "a Western volunteer, recently
>> returned
>> from Mexico." I know there were "freedmen" who served in the Mexican
>> American War, but given the speaker's "unmarked" status in the
>> narrative,
>> I think we can safely assume he was intended to be Euro-American.
>>
>> Mark Twain is quoted in the OED as telling his publisher in 1882, "I's
>> gwyne to sen' you de stuff," but that looks like it's merely a bit of
>> dialect-minstrelsy.
>>
>>
>> --Ben Zimmer
>>
>
>Thanks, Ben.
>So, that the speaker was white and that "gwine" hasn't always been
>regarded as a peculiarity of Negro dialect is a distinct possibility.
>"Veddy interesting," as they used to say on Laugh-In.
>
>-Wilson
~~~~~~~~
My first  thought was /Irish/, triggered by the "jints" but then I'd have
expected "divil," so that didn't work.  Then I briefly wondered,  /written
testimony?/  but the gross spelling inconsistencies made that unlikely.
/Inept eye dialect/ is my current notion, which makes me think it
unreliable as a reference for "gwine."
Using "rite" and "strait" and "cum" suggest simply plugging in conventional
markers to indicate uneducated speech, since they have no phonemic
advantage.
A. Murie