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

[Wilson Gray]

As teenagers in Saint Louis, we used to use rhotic "feller" and
"yeller" as joking pronunciations mocking "hill-billy" talk," just
because we could. We had no contact at all with "hill-biliies," except
on the radio and in the movies, (anybody else remember, e.g., Maw &
Paw Kettle or Judy Canova and her rhotic feller, Lukey [liukI], who
"shore did love at-air gal"?) and had no reason to mock them. Down
home in Texas, "windih" [wIndI] was the usual BE pronunciation of
"window"; in Saint Louis, it was "winduh" [wind@]. When a map showed
me that the Poconos are part of the Appalachians, I started jokingly
referring to my wife's PA hometown as being located in the rhotic
"holler."

-Wilson

On 10/10/07, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: antedating (?) "Katy, bar the door" (1890)
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> At 3:49 PM -0400 10/10/07, Charles Doyle wrote:
> >As someone dwelling in Old Yeller country, I would assume that the
> >"-er" spelling at the end of "yeller" (as well as in friendly or
> >affectionate "feller") usually indicates /@/. Which is not to say
> >that [r] doesn't intrude sometimes, but perhaps less frequently than
> >in "r-less" dialects of the northeastern US (JFK's nemesis "Cuber")?
> >
> >--Charlie
>
> Oh right, "feller".  Also "holler" ('declivity'), "winder", and
> "tater".  I see now that there's a "regional note" under "holler" in
> the AHD4 , but it indicates all these are indeed pronounced
> rhotically in the relevant (Appalachian) area, which is, of course, a
> rhotic area.  So I'm a bit confused still.  Are there two different
> processes involved, which overlap and clash?
>
> LH
>
> >_____________________________________________________________
> >
> >
> >>
> >>Not just the Brits.  Am I writing in assuming, as I always have,
> >>that "yeller" as in "high yeller" (for skin pigmentation) or "Old
> >>Yeller" (for the eponymous pooch) is so written to indicate final
> >>/@/ rather than the standard /o/, and that the rhotic pronunciation
> >>is essentially the same as that below (or in "Eeyore")?
> >>
> >>LH
> >
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--
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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