Brooklynese in N.O.

[Benjamin Zimmer]

On Wed, 14 Sep 2005 12:05:04 -0400, Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM> wrote:

>It sounds like utter bullshit to me. The ^r > oi/oi > ^r alternation
>is a commonplace in the South, not just in New Orleans, at least in
>black speech. Get out your old Temptations 45's  and notice how often
>you hear "oi" for "^r" and the reverse. This has been documented at
>least as far back as1966, in the book, _Five Smooth Stones_, by Ann
>Fairbairn, in which, in an aside, she notes this as a typical feature
>of New Orleans BE.

I've often wondered about the distribution of the palatal upglide to
replace /r/ after a stressed mid-central vowel (I'll use /3/ here, the
SAMPA equivalent for "reversed epsilon"). It's my impression that in
dialects of the Deep South, the upglide is most common before a nasal. So
for instance Mississippi-born Robert Johnson used the upglide in
"Milkcow's Calf Blues" ("your milk is turnin /t3jn at n/ blue"), as did
Mississippi-born Muddy Waters in "You Can't Lose What You Ain't Never Had"
("Had a sweet little home, it got burnt /b3jnt/ down, people ain't that
bad"). Presumably this is what Berkeley-born John Fogerty was shooting for
in "Proud Mary" ("Big wheel keep on turnin /t3jn at n/, Proud Mary keep on
burnin /b3jn at n/").


--Ben Zimmer