Pronouncing "Massachusetts"

[Jonathan Lighter]

"Missippi" seems to be the functional standard in East Tennessee.

  JL

Beverly Flanigan <flanigan at OHIO.EDU> wrote:
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Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Beverly Flanigan
Subject: Re: Pronouncing "Massachusetts"
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Speaking of pronunciations, has anyone else noticed that Anderson Cooper
has been talking about the River with only three syllables? It's Missippi
for him. But then, some old-timers in Minnesota used to speak of
Minn-ap'-o-lis, with four instead of five syllables.

At 12:21 PM 8/3/2007, you wrote:
>---------------------- Information from the mail header
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>Sender: American Dialect Society
>Poster: Jonathan Lighter
>Subject: Pronouncing "Massachusetts"
>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>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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