eggcorn

[Rex W. Stocklin]

At 3:24 PM -0500 5/11/05, Rachel Shuttlesworth wrote:

>Sounds like the Southern shift ( i <--> I ) to me. I've also seen,
>"Feel in the following form and submit." Is this an eggcorn, though?
>I dunno.


I would think that a true eggcorn would be like the mondegreen, a
misheard and or misunderstood word form, as opposed to a dialectic
anomaly. "Phil in the following form", while odd, would be an
eggcorn, as would "Try the feel, it is most tender tonight!"

I am a Hoosier. We are notorious for vowel shifts, well not so much
those (unless you count "worsh" for "wash") but rolling the vowels
(perhaps THE most egregious and ubiquitous example you can hear
throughout the fall and winter is "The Indianapolis Coats" for our
NFL franchise.)

Today I heard, regarding that team, a news report involving the
controversial new stadium funding package that has been shuttlecocked
to and fro between our Democratic mayor and the newly elected GOP
Governor. A town boardmember of a bedroom community was interviewed
concerning certain taxation pieces of that package and he said that
"they'd likely not sale here. (paraphrase). "sell" and "sale"
frequently get dysspoken here. a la "colt" & coat", as well as "row"
and "roll"...."cold" and "code" We get hung up on them "L"s.

One such shift of speech, currently in vogue, is "tour". Why, just
today ON "The Today Show", the greet puppet Matt Lauer was spouting
"tor" in its stead, as is the wont of the affected, methinks, while
Sir Mick of Sticky Fingers was correctly ululating "tour", like any
man schooled in the mother tongue should http:// 60+ and he's still
Rolling and teaching us, humbly, if you can believe it, enunciation.

We've moved fur passed (sic) ebonics and the axe-ask axis. But with a
Prez who can't - strike that - won't fix his nuclear malaprop, such
verbal sloppiness is to be expected...or expectorated.

A local euphemism, that might be regional, is "shoot far", as in
"Well, shoot far! that was some twister, huh?" Now, I'm no linguist,
that's y'alls province, but I'm reckoning that "far" is the shift of
"fire" and "shoot" is the intentional dumbing down of the taboo
"shit". Thus "shit fire!" Which has a colorful history, documented in
664 English Google pages. Having shat fire, or something feeling very
much like that, I would corroborate that.

Lexy Rexy (aka Bloghorn Egghorn)
Fishers