Tee-nine-see

[James C Stalker]

Louisville, same maturational period.  First syllable stress for normal use;
second syllable stress for emphasis.  "I tell you.  It was a TEE nine sey
(little) thing.  I mean tee NINE sey."

JCS

Doug Harris writes:

> Like you, dInIs, I grew up in the Louisville area in the same period -- with
> a couple of years in the middle up Morehead and Mt Sterling way -- and I
> seem to think we emphasized the NINE sylabobbel.
> Something else I remember from the time I was maybe ten or eleven was a
> saying a Lexington-resident aunt of mine said was an "old" one, or maybe she
> said it was a "common" one. Either way, I never to this day have heard
> anyone but her say "spit is a horrible word, but it's worse on the end of
> your cigar." I neither smoked nor spat much in those days (nor do I do
> either today!), and I couldn't quite fathom what the saying was meant to
> mean. I'm still not quite sure, and I'm still wondering why the memory of
> her reciting that to a cousin of mine while we were on a (local) bus has
> always been such a vivid memory.
> (the other) doug
> ================
>>I grew up in the Louisville area, 1940's and 50's and used TEE-nine-see
> (stress on first not second syllable, and 'see' not 'shee' in the last).
> Wilson, you just got to stop thinking that everything you said when you was
> little is Black. Lots of us white guys out here say the same stuff. If you
> want to be shocked by white guys, save it for Imus.
>>
>>The palatalization is interesting in your form. (I take the 'see' form to
> be more widely distributed.) Is it the influence of the following high front
> vowel? I'm having trouble thinking of comparatively weakly stressed
> /-Vnsi##/ strings. (I can think of /-VnsiC/ forms like "linseed".) "Unseat,
> "unseemly," etc... are all in stressed syllables and seem to me very
> unlikely to go to /sh/ so perhaps it's the sequence plus the lenition of the
> weaker stress that promotes the palatalization in your form.
>>
>>Finally, if this is formed from "teensy," as it almost certainly is (itself
> already surely a development tiny -> teeny -> teensy), are there other
> examples of a "diminutivizing infix" of this sort? (Of course, it could be
> an augmentative augmenting the notion "small.")
>>
>>This will teach me to get up early on Saturday.
>>
>>dInIs
>
>>>Subject:      Re: Query for Charlie-nim
>>>-----------------------------------------------------------
>>>
>>>>Are y'all familiar with the term that's pronounced something like
> "tee-NINE-shee"? It means "very small" and is used instead of "itty-bitty"
> or "teeny-tiny." When I was in the Army, I heard this used by Texans of all
> races, creeds, and colors from all over the state. I learned it from my
> mother and my grandmother - I hated any story that  began, "Whin yew wuh
> jes' a tee-nine-shee baby ..." Until my Army days, I was under the
> impression that this word was peculiar to the women in my family. You can
> imagine my shock when I first heard it fall tripppingly from the tongue of a
> white farm boy from Mundy, Texas. Later, I heard it used by GI's from
> Weslaco, Dallas, Odessa, Midland, Tyler, Galveston, etc., etc. But that was
> fifty years ago.
>>>>
>>>>So, I was wondering whether any y'all were familiar with this term? Is it
> peculiar to Texas or is it also used elsewhere?
>>>>
>>>>-Wilson
>
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James C. Stalker
Department of English
Michigan State University

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