The hambone redux

[Wilson Gray]

Sigh! One never knows, do one? I once googled my own name and
discovered a woman named "Wilson Gray." And, can you believe it? also
a native of Texas.

-Wilson

On Mon, Apr 14, 2008 at 3:18 PM, Benjamin Zimmer
<bgzimmer at babel.ling.upenn.edu> wrote:
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>  Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>  Poster:       Benjamin Zimmer <bgzimmer at BABEL.LING.UPENN.EDU>
>
> Subject:      Re: The hambone redux
>  -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>
> On Mon, Apr 14, 2008 at 3:12 PM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:
>  >
>  > You have to remember that very few country colored folk had access to
>  > the kind of education that would have taught them anything about
>  > Classical Latin and grammatical gender. I'm sure that both sets of
>  > parents invented "Delecta" and "Davidica" off the tops of their heads,
>  > without the foggiest notion that    "-a" had anything to do with women
>  > or (historically) with the Feminine gender. There are Biblical male
>  > names like "Noah," "Joshua" (Josh away"), "Elija," "Jonah," etc.
>  > ending in [-@] to provide examples.
>
>  Conversely, I know of a girl with the (Biblical male) name "Nehemiah",
>  or "Miah" for short.
>
>
>  --Ben Zimmer
>
>
>
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All say, "How hard it is that we have to die"---a strange complaint to
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 -Sam'l Clemens

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