Pronouncing "Massachusetts"

[Jonathan Lighter]

Some months ago one of our distinguished scholars confessed to a "boyhood pronunciation" of "Massachusetts" that might be regarded as highly insulting by residents of that state.  Indeed, I had a student from Tennessee some twenty years ago who was using that very pronunciation well nto his college years.

  The following true incident of sociophonological conflict is reported by J. Douglas Harvey in his WWII memoir, _Boys, Bombs, and Brussels Sprouts_ (Toronto: McClennd & Stewart, 1981), pp. 118-19. Harvey was a pilot in the Royal Canadian Air Force:

  "We were standing at the bar of a pub one night, enjoying the convivial atmosphere, when we were joined by two English couples....The conversation finally got around to the fact that [Arnold Rose] was an American and...[o]ne of the wives asked Rose where he came from in the United States.
  "'Massachusetts,' Rose said.
  "'What?' they all asked. 'Where did you say?'
  "'Massachusetts,' he repeated.
  "'Massa-two-shits!' squealed one of the wives. 'Massa-two-shits!' She was screaming with laughter....'Massa-two-shits,' she bellowed, completely out of control. 'Oh, I say, can you imagine? Massa-two-shits!'....
  "Rose was furious. 'For Christ's sake, what's funny?' he demanded....'Come on,' he yelled at me. 'Bloody stupid limeys, they make me sick!'  Rose dragged me towards the door. 'We should let them fight their own goddamned war. Stupid bastards!'"

  One might object that intoxication or a slight hearing defect combined with an unfortunately naive sense of humor was responsible for this _contretemps_, but the reports of linguistic professionals adduced above suggest that more is going on here.  Observe that, despite superficial appearances, the erroneous pronunciation is not a typical case of metathesis, as both the original phoneme /C/ (the voiceless palato-velar affricate) must be analyzed into component phones before the transposition can be made; and that the original palato-velar /s/ must be correspondingly made an affricate.

  It is all very curious to me, unless one posits that a desire for simple, ribald paranomasia lies behind such occurrences.  This interpretation I am not prepared, as yet, to accept, for it does not go quite far enough in explaining the seemingly genuine dialectal, rather than merely _ad hoc_, examples of transposition.

  JL


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