yea/ yeah

[Paul Johnston]

My wife (from Cleveland, of German extraction) frequently says /ja/.
So do real upper-class British RP speakers, though their /a/ is a
back one, making their version sound very Germanic.  In fact, at
Edinburgh, the students from such backgrounds (viewed as snobs and as
twits) are frequently called "the Yahs".

Paul Johnston
On May 3, 2007, at 4:44 PM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at YAHOO.COM>
> Subject:      Re: yea/ yeah
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> ---------
>
> I've noticed some native English speakers who sort of say / ja /,
> especially from the Midwest and Northeast - I think.
>
>   Less rounded than German "ja."
>
>   JL
>
> sagehen <sagehen at WESTELCOM.COM> wrote:
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> Sender: American Dialect Society
> Poster: sagehen
> Subject: Re: yea/ yeah
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> ---------
>
>> Really a jumble.
>>
>> I recall a 1917-18 article mentioning - no, recommending - that
>> pupils
>> in American grammar schools be restrained from saying "yeah" (already
>> under taboo as "slovenly") on the interesting ground that it
>> sounded too
>> "Teutonic."
>>
>> Yeah-voll, mine hair !
>>
>> JL
> ~~~~~~~~
> Interesting! Before I read this post, but while catching up on this
> thread
> I stopped to think for a minute about my own "yeah" & realized
> (rather to
> my surprise) that my "yeah" tends strongly toward the German "Ja!"
> in some
> of its functions.
> I also realized that my pronunciation varies a lot depending on how
> I'm
> using it. I don't just mean register, which, of course, entails a
> lot of
> variability in pronunciation. I wonder if others find the same is
> true for
> them.........?
> [I am almost entirely of British Isles extraction going back to
> before the
> American Revolution & no one in my family speaks German except as a
> language student.]
> That strong antipathy toward anything German was a lot like the
> "freedom
> fries" of embarassingly recent memory. Lots of things got targeted
> as too
> Teutonic during WWI & many underwent name changes or worse.
> AM
>
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