eggcorn

[Beverly Flanigan]

Rex, we're going to have to get you up to speed on dialect variation!  All
the shifts you note are common, and they're neither good ("proper") nor bad
("egregious").  So, the loss of medial or final 'L' is common in some areas
(it's "vowelized"); the tensing (or laxing, or merging) of vowels before L
is common, again in different regions; the merging of 'tour' and 'tore' is
common in Philly and Baltimore (and my student heard it in Cleveland
recently).  Lauer's 'tor' is not "affected," nor is Jagger's 'tour' either
"correct" or "schooled"; they just ARE.  The 'ax'/'ask' inversion is common
in many English dialects, not just African American English.  'For' and
'far' are merged in some areas (esp. St. Louis and, at least formerly, in
Utah).  And Bush, for all his faults, pronounces 'nuclear' as many people
naturally do, not because he WON'T do otherwise.  "Enunciation" vs.
"dumbing down" ain't got nothin' to do with these examples!

At 12:17 AM 5/12/2005, you wrote:
>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