Heard on the Judges (SWANG)

[ronbutters at AOL.COM]

What is the point of this message? "Swing" in connection with sexual activity is well established (as in "swinger" & "swing either way"). Moreover, "swang" as the past tense of "swing" is not peculiar to "BE"--so why the posting at all? What does "SE" have to do with anything of interest? What was a Google search supposed to accomplish?

.
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

-----Original Message-----
From: Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>

Date:         Wed, 14 Nov 2007 13:04:42
To:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject:      [ADS-L] Heard on the Judges


A linguistically-assimilated, (i.e., there was nothing about his
speech that revealed his ethnicity) Latin man was suing his Angla
girlfriend, claiming that the last two of their five children were not
his, because they looked like full-blooded, blue-eyed, blond Anglos.
One pure-Anglo-looking kid, well, you never know. But two?! You gotta
wonder. He lays out his case.

He: "... And then they went off together and I didn't see them for a
couple of days. That would have been right around the time for
conception."

Judge: "She went off with her girlfriend? What does that have to do
with conceiving a child?"

He: "It wasn't just her girlfriend! It was also her girlfriend's
boyfriend! She _swang_ that way, in those days!"

Over 50,000 raw Google hits for _swang_, , but, IMO, they appear
mainly to represent eye-dialect for BE/SE "swing":

BE: I'm gonna swang 'n' swang 'n' swang

SE: Grab your partner, swang her around

-Wilson

(DNA tests showed that both children were his.)

--
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

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

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