"Braynch"

[Wilson Gray]

Thinking of the Southern / BE pronunciation of "branch" as "braynch,"
I've finally become motivated to try to describe a couple of
distinctions between middle-class BE and working-class BE.

In general, middle-class, East-Texan BE speakers pronounce, e.g.
_Xench_ as "Xinch," as expected However, working-class speakers use
"Xaynch." The latter is an example of the so-called - in East Texas,
at least - "flat-talking" subdialect as opposed to the
"proper-English-talking" subdialect.

In general, middle-class, Saint Louis BE speakers pronounce "pencil"
as "pincil," as epected. However, working-class speakers use "pancil."

Unfortunately, it's been so long since I've lived in either Texas or
Saint Louis and even dekkids since I've lived among relatives from
Texas or Saint Louis, I can't come up with any other examples off the
top of my head. For some reason, the above examples have always drawn
my active attention.

BTW, if anyone has wondered why (East) Texas, but not (East) Missouri,
it's that Saint Louis is a linguistic island in more ways than one.
Saint Louis is the only city in the country that's its own county.
Hence, the City of Saint Louis is politically separate from Saint
Louis County, whose county seat is Clayton. A consequence of this is
that, until very recently, Saint Louis County was 99.44% white, the
local black population being fully contained within the limits of the
City of Saint Louis, with no spillover. There was, therefore, no
regional dialect of BE, only the city dialect, which, nevertheless,
was split into two subdialects, there being two physically separate,
black enclaves. Since my knowledge of dialectology was less than zero,
in those days, I can characterize them only as "less Southem" (the
West End) and "more Southern" (Downtown, not to be confused with
"downtown" in the "shopping" sense.).

-Wilson

--
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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