antedating (?) "Katy, bar the door" (1890)

[Wilson Gray]

"When she say that, hit's 'Katy, bar _ther_ do',' then, _fer_ she's
gwine _ter_ do it."

I assume that the passage is a bit of eye-dialect BE.

Therefore, FWIW, I note that shwa [I spell it this way because I
choose to] is replaced by shwa+r in this way in some fairly rare
dialects of BE to this day. A ninety-ish cousin of mine from down home
in Texas uses it and I've heard it used by the odd speaker/singer from
bluesman to hiphopper. It sounds rather strange, hearing someone use
an "r" where nobody else does, whereas the person doesn't use "r"
where the standard, at least, does use one.`

-Wilson


On 10/3/07, Benjamin Zimmer <bgzimmer at babel.ling.upenn.edu> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Benjamin Zimmer <bgzimmer at BABEL.LING.UPENN.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: antedating (?) "Katy, bar the door" (1890)
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On 10/3/07, Benjamin Zimmer <bgzimmer at ling.upenn.edu> wrote:
> >
> > 1888 _Current Literature_ Dec. 499/1 When she say that, hits 'Katy,
> > bar ther do, then, fer she's gwineter do it.
> > [HNP Doc ID 229263831]
>
> Sorry, missed some punctuation in there:
>
> 1888 _Current Literature_ Dec. 499/1 When she say that, hits 'Katy,
> bar ther do', then, fer she's gwineter do it.
>
>
> --Ben Zimmer
>
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