"fanelights"

Mon Oct 2 04:42:21 UTC 2006

Roger Lass (a Brooklynite) says that what really happened to [3i] was
that the second element became closer and turned into /r/, reinforced
by the incoming /r/-pronunciation from other parts of the country.
NYC /r/ in this position is somewhat palatal--and I think this
variant is widespread in  the area today.  I think I have it, in
fact, and I'm a suburb kid from solid rhotic territory (Orange
County, NY and Morris County, NJ).   There are also still plenty of
New Yorkers who are largely non-rhotic in all cases except this
vowel--that's the usual pattern  I find among older women, for instance.

Paul Johnston
On Oct 1, 2006, at 4:20 PM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at YAHOO.COM>
> Subject:      Re: "fanelights"
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
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>
> 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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> Sender: American Dialect Society
> Poster: Paul Johnston
>
> Subject: Re: "fanelights"
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> ---------
>
> 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"
>> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
>> -
>> ---------
>>
>> 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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>> Sender: American Dialect Society
>> Poster: Lynne Murphy
>> Subject: "fanelights"
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>> -
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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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