wush (was Re: "Sock It to Me")

[Wilson Gray]

That's very interesting, Larry. I had no idea about the Pittsburgh
usage. Needless to say, I faked it in my spelling. I say "Mama-nim."
It would take about a week of practice for me to be able to lower
[nIm] to [nEm] and I'd still have to plan ahead, to use it in actual
speech.

The guy that I heard say "Mama-nem" was the Bloch Fellow at the 1971
LSA Summer Institute. He was an Americanist - the Haida language, if
memory serves - from Columbia. Unfortunately, I'm able only to
tip-of-my-tongue his name. In his speech, he sounded like the second
coming of Arnold Stang. I don't know whether you're old enough to
remember Arnold, but he made his living playing the Yiddish-accented,
token Jewish kid, with a name like "Harvey Prinzmettel"(sp?), on a
zillion radio programs - A Date With Judy, Meet Corliss Archer, Our
Miss Brooks, etc. - and a few early TV shows, back in the day.

-Wilson

On 6/28/05, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: wush (was Re: "Sock It to Me")
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> At 2:25 PM -0400 6/28/05, Wilson Gray wrote:
> >   BTW, I've also heard
> >"nem" as in "Mama-nem" - generally considered to be a Southernism and
> >"scream on" - used in St. Louis BE slang to mean "shout at" - likewise
> >used by Jewish New Yorkers with the relevant meaning. Weird! IAC, if
> >I've offended anyone, I apologize.)
> >
> >-Wilson Gray
>
> I don't know about Jewish New Yorkers (even though I'm one of 'em),
> but Pittsburghers count "Momanem" as a shibboleth of Pittsburghese
> (in "humorous" regional-pride books, newspaper articles, pamphlets
> and web sites), so I'm not sure how generally it's considered to be a
> Southernism.
>
> Larry
>


--
-Wilson Gray