Brooklynese in N.O.

[Jonathan Lighter]

Dan Baum, "The Regulars," _New Yorker_, Sept. 19, p. 36:

 " ' These people got no place else to go,' she said, in the meaty New Orleans accent that is more ' Sopranos '  than  ' Gone With the Wind.' "

Are there other "meaty" accents ?    Would we know ?

JL

"Mullins, Bill" <Bill.Mullins at US.ARMY.MIL> wrote:
---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: "Mullins, Bill"
Subject: Re: Brooklynese in N.O.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

>And, lest anyone misunderstand, I really do make the claim that, in my
>childhood, black people in Marshall, Texas, did pronounce, e.g. "burn"
>as "boin" and, e.g. "coin" as "kern," abstracting away from the actual
>phonetic representations. Butchawl get the picture.

You may have seen an old episode of "Saturday Night Live" in which
Billy Crystal and Christopher Guest played two old Negro League baseball
players, in blackface. One or the other of them talked about playing
in Birmingham, and "bir" came out like "buoy" -- Buoyminham.
Is this the same pronounciation?


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