Merkins

[Wilson Gray]

As far back as ca.1970, a linguist whose name unfortunately is lost
from memory suggested in a paper the use of "Merican" as the
designation of what is now, for some reason, clumsily called
"African-American Vernacular English."

To give credit where credit is due, however, allow me to point out
that it is now possible to find a surprisingly large number of
American speakers of English who are literally of second-generation,
sub-Saharan African descent. My experience has been that such people
do indeed speak the so-called AAVE dialect, having assimilated
themselves to Americans of sixth-generation and earlier, sub-Saharan
African descent. Hence, it appears to be the case that the AAVE
designation is an amazing instance of prescience.
Like, who knew?

-Wilson

On 10/19/06, Beverly Flanigan <flanigan at ohio.edu> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Beverly Flanigan <flanigan at OHIO.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: Merkins
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> At 12:40 PM 10/19/2006, you wrote:
> >I don't think changing traditional spelling (tradspel) is doable.  Ted
> >Roosevelt in consort with Andrew Carnegie tried and couldn't change a word,
> >even through an executive order.  Webster was the last success, at least in
> >USA.
> >
> >So the only thing possible to influence is pronunciation, keeping it
> >consistent with tradspel to help learners by maintaining letter sound
> >correspondance.  But I see no mechanism to do that except for our schools.
> >Now that "phonemic awareness" (Stanovich) is seen to be the "single most
> >important attribute exhibited by successful readers" (to paraphrase), there
> >may be more action in that area.  I think the trend away from phonics in the
> >past for early reading teachers has fostered disparate pronunciations.  I
> >advocate for USA English the Writing to Read approach by IBM of the 80's,
> >only using truespel, which has no special symbols.
> >
> >"Merkins".  Is that an Ausy term?
>
> No, no--'Merkins' is a tried and true American English
> pronunciation!  Listen to Newt Gingrich (if you can stand to), and you'll
> hear him call us "Mer(a)kins" (I'd put a schwa in there).  It's
> Philly/Baltimore/east Pennsylvania dialect, and maybe more (NJ? Del?).  The
> first syllable is the same as in 'Murray'.  Recall our
> Mary/merry/marry/Murray discussion a while back?  Another problem with the
> alphabetic principle--people just won't obey it!
>
>
>
> >Tom Z
> >
> >
> >>From: RonButters at AOL.COM
> >>
> >>Do you advocate, then, quite different spelling conventions (more than
> >>the=20
> >>trivial differences that we now see) for the England, Scotland, Wales,
> >>Irela=
> >>nd,=20
> >>Jamaica, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, India, etc.? Or should they
> >>a=
> >>ll=20
> >>have to speak Merkin? It seems to me that this would make English a MUCH
> >>mor=
> >>e=20
> >>DIFFICULT language to learn as a 2nd language.
> >>
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--
Everybody says, "How hard it is that we have to die"---a strange
complaint to come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-----
Whoever has lived long enough to find out what life is knows how deep
a debt of gratitude we owe to Adam, the first great benefactor of our
race. He brought death into the world.

--Sam Clemens

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