Heard on The Judges: weird coincidence

Wilson Gray hwgray at GMAIL.COM
Wed Apr 16 18:01:10 UTC 2008


Forty-ish white defendant:

"There were _multi_ [m^ltai] people running up and down the stairs!"

When I was A teenager in Saint Louis, "multi" was pronounced and used
in exactly this way among the boys within our in-group.  I.e., it was
used by no more than ten guys, back in the day when words like "anti"
and "ante" were still identical in pronunciation, and pronouncing such
words as "anti", "semi," "multi," etc.,with [ai] was still considered
a joke and not standard or, at least, ordinary.

IAC, I hadn't heard "multi' used like that in about 55 years.
Unfortunately, I hear "multi" pronounced like that all time, nowadays.

-Wilson
--
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

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



More information about the Ads-l mailing list