Sound-change in BE

[Benjamin Zimmer]

On 1/29/06, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> When I was a child, I never heard the sound commonly represented in
> eye-dialect as "aow" used by any black speaker. When I was a young
> man, I noticed that my female contemporaries had begun to use "aow."
> Now, I hear "aow" used by black men. Cf., e.g. Dave Chappelle, as one
> egregious example.

Are we talking about a diphthong (triphthong?) used
cross-contextually, or just used on its own as an interjection? If the
latter, here's an example of eye-dialectal "aow" which would
corroborate your perception of a gender distinction, from Gang Starr's
1994 album _Hard to Earn_ (this particular line is by guest rapper Lil
Dap):

"Make the chicks say 'aow' and the brothers say 'ho'."
http://www.ohhla.com/anonymous/gngstarr/hard_to/speak_ya.gsr.txt


--Ben Zimmer

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org