Brooklynese in N.O.

[Jonathan Lighter]

The so-called "Brooklyn diphthong" in words like "girl," "world," etc., seems to be extremely difficult for non-users to imitate.  They always make it come out like "oy," which it very rarely is ( though cf. Jackie Mason).  It becomes even harder when, as very often, it's followed by a semi-retroflex "r."

To my ear it is not quite the same as the Southern diphthong used by, e.g., the late Strom Thurmond of South Carolina.

The "dh" for "th" seems to me to be far more common in N.Y.C. than "d" for "th."

Very notable similarities between much N.O. and N.Y.C. pronunciation are the parallel "r-dropping" and the relative lack of diphthongization in N.O. compared with much of the Gulf South.

JL

"Arnold M. Zwicky" <zwicky at CSLI.STANFORD.EDU> wrote:
---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: "Arnold M. Zwicky"
Subject: Re: Brooklynese in N.O.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

On Sep 14, 2005, at 1:48 PM, Peter McGraw reports:

> --On Wednesday, September 14, 2005 12:43 PM -0700 "Arnold M. Zwicky"
> wrote:
>
>> anybody have evidence
>> on the use of "y'all" in brooklyn in the late 19th century?
>
> Well, I did hear that some of the workers took their boat (a yawl, no
> doubt) and went back to Brooklyn.

i believe they were escaping from the yaws, a disease resulting from
the highly contagious vocalization of postvocalic [l].

arnold

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
http://mail.yahoo.com