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[Laurence Horn]

At 3:47 PM -0400 7/19/07, Beverly Flanigan wrote:
>I'm not sure what South Midlanders would do with the verb, frankly; I don't
>think I've ever heard it (I'm not a native here).  But the Columbus
>newspaper is the DIS-patch locally (we're 70 miles southeast of Columbus).

and at 4:06 PM -0400 7/19/07, Wilson Gray wrote:
>I don't know that I've ever consciously heard "DIS-patch," except in
>mock Southern or Southwestern dialect. The local newspaper in Saint
>Louis has always been the "Post-dis-PATCH."
>
>-Wilson

I pronounce it as the CoLUMbus DISpatch too, and I'm not a South
Midlander--I think it's just the rhythm rule striking again, since I
would also say "the POST DisPATCH" or, even for the Columbus paper,
"I read it in the DisPATCH" (maybe stress here can go either way--I
don't say it often enough to be confident in my intuitions).

LH

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