Heard on the Judges

[Wilson Gray]

"Radiator" pronounced to rhyme with "gladiator."

 I've heard this pronunciatiion in the wild from only three people,
all black, all male, and all  from either Virginia or Pennsylvania.
Two of them were much older than I am and are, therefore, dead. The
third person, from Pennsylvania, whom I heard today, appearing to be
about fifty, was also quite mature. Well, actually he was rather
young, given that he was about twenty years my junior. This
Pennsylvanian was quite well-spoken. (English translation: you'd have
to see him in order to be aware that he was black.)

The same could also be said - you had to see her - about a thirty-ish
black woman, officially from Indianapolis, who sounded as though she
had been born and bred just one holler over from Dolly Parton's
birthplace. As far as I could tell, this woman was the real deal and
not somebody like Cowboy Troy, who speaks BE with merely a
hillbilly-ish overlay.

-Wilson
--
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die"---a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-----
-Sam'l Clemens

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