"fanelights"

Sun Oct 1 20:20:21 UTC 2006

Part of the variability may be that the original quality of the diphthong really was hard for some to reproduce even as children. To my ear (with speakers who have it and who were born since ca 1930), the following "r" can also be heard..

  I believe I posted on this last year, but my grandfather (born in the 1880's) had the sound somewhat more "strongly" than my grandmother (also 1880's).  Both were born in Manhattan.

  Carroll O'Connor's "Archie Bunker" sounded very, very much like my grandparents, who said both / b ^i d /  and / t r L I t /.  The "r" in "toilet" was moderately enunciated.

  In the 1970s I met a guy my age whho'd grown up in Staten Island who really did say "Boyd" for "bird," but this was so unusual in my experience that I assumed he had a mild hearing impairment. His intervocalic "r's" approached the Elmer Fudd "w," a feature I have frequently seen represented in late 19th C. caricatures of English and American dandies.

  I also knew a girl from Staten Island, two years younger, who had none of these features.  To the ordinary interlocutor, she could have been from almost anywhere north of the Mason-Dixon Line.

  JL

  Paul Johnston <paul.johnston at WMICH.EDU> wrote:
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Poster: Paul Johnston

Subject: Re: "fanelights"
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Sorry, wrong message, but it gets to the same list.

There's variability in that "oi" in bird too. I only grew up hearing
the originally "genteel" version--that is, like the English vowel in
bird + /i/ , something like [3i]. Sometimes with only the bare hint
of the /i/, too, at least from (old) middle-class speakers. Real
NYC vernacular speakers my age had a "full-blooded" one, but still
with a first element of [3]. So I thought the [^i] you heard in
gangster movies was a complete fabrication. Then I heard Hudson
County, NJ speakers--one of only three (two?) counties that really
come from "Joisey"--and tapes of New Yorkers born about 1880. It's
real too. What isn't is anything with a rounded vowel in the beginning.

Paul Johnston
On Oct 1, 2006, at 11:26 AM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:

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> Sender: American Dialect Society
> Poster: Jonathan Lighter
> Subject: Re: "fanelights"
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> ---------
>
> In NYC in the '50s I sometimes heard "fins !" in precisely the
> general sense indicated in the 1870 quot. The fingers of each hand
> were crossed as an accompanying visual signal.
>
> At the time I thought the crossed fingers somehow represented
> fish's fins. That didn't make any sense either, but what the
> heck. But usually kids just said, "Wait a minute !" or "Time
> out !" (Possibly also "Truce !" but I couldn't swear to this.)
>
> JL
>
> Lynne Murphy wrote:
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> Poster: Lynne Murphy
> Subject: "fanelights"
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>
> Off-list, I've been directed to _fain v2_ in the OED, which says:
>
> = FEN v.2 Used in the expression fains or fain(s I, fain it, fainit
> (e)s:
> see quots.
> 1870 N. & Q. 4th Ser. VI. 415/2 ‘Fains’, or ‘Fain it’A term
> demanding a
> ‘truce’ during the progress of any game, which is always granted by
> the
> opposing party. Ibid. 517/1 A boy who had ‘killed’ another at
> marbles, that
> is hit his marble, would call out ‘Fain it’, meaning ‘You mustn't
> shoot at
> me in return’; or if a boy was going to shoot, and some inequality of
> surface was in his way, which he would have cleared away, his
> antagonist
> would prevent him by calling out ‘Fain clears’. Ibid. 517/2 If a
> prefect
> wants anything fetched for him and does not say by whom, those who
> wish to
> get off going say ‘Fain I’. 1889 BARRÈRE & LELAND Dict. Slang, Faints
> [sic], in vogue among schoolboys to express a wish temporarily to
> withdraw
> from participation in the particular sport or game being played. 1891
> FARMER Slang, Fains! Fainits! Fain it! 1913 C. MACKENZIE Sinister
> St. I. I.
> vii. 103 He could shout ‘fain I’ to be rid of an obligation and
> ‘bags I’ to
> secure an advantage. 1927 W. E. COLLINSON Contemp. English 14 The
> custom of
> putting oneself out of the game altogether by crossing the fingers and
> saying pax! or faynights! [feinaits] or both together. 1948 J.
> BETJEMAN
> Coll. Poems (1958) 150 ‘I'd rather not.’ ‘Fains I.’ ‘It's up to
> you.’ 1960
> Guardian 1 July 9/7 The Englishman..could remain absolutely pax and
> fainites. 1969 I. & P. OPIE Children's Games i. 18 This rule is so
> embedded
> in children's minds that their immediate response to the proposal
> of a game
> is to cry out..‘Me fains first’. Ibid., He must safeguard himself
> by saying
> in one gulp, ‘Let's-play-Tig-fains-I-be-on-it’.
>
> Thanks very much!
>
> Lynne
> Dr M Lynne Murphy
> Senior Lecturer and Head of Department
> Linguistics and English Language
> Arts B133
> University of Sussex
> Brighton BN1 9QN
>
> phone: +44-(0)1273-678844
> http://separatedbyacommonlanguage.blogspot.com
>
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