Amos, Andy, and "unlax"

[Scot LaFaive]

In Google's infinite wisdom, among the ads beside this thread in gmail was
the following:

Curse Like Count Tolstoy
Learn the basics of Russian cursing
For hard-core students of Russian!
www.russiancursing.com

And in case you didn't think Russian curse words were irrelevant, the
website even says "Russians have been cursing since before the Mongol
invasion, despite legends to the contrary." Can't say as I've heard of these
legends to the contrary.

Scot


On Jan 21, 2008 3:25 PM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: Amos, Andy, and "unlax"
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> FWIW, "unlax," even in BE, has always struck me as a joking
> pronunciation primarily used by middle-class speakers. Cf. James
> Brown:
>
> There was a time
> When I used to dance
> There was a time
> When I used to prance
> There was a dance
> They called the "jerk"
> Now, everybody _RE-lax_ [emphasis in original] (not "*UN-lax")
> And watch me work!
> Watch me, now!
>
> The Godfather of Soul would surely have used "unlax," had he
> considered it soulful.
>
> IAC, most BE speakers, in my experience, would use a regional term
> like "stretch out" or a slang term like "lay dead." But, hol' own
> dare, bruthuh Larrih, I don't intend to claim that Amos & Andy English
> wasn't popular, back in the day.
>
> -Wilson
>
> On Jan 21, 2008 2:38 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu> wrote:
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> > Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> > Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> > Subject:      Amos, Andy, and "unlax"
> >
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> > More inspiration from football...
> >
> > On the radio, from a sports talk show host interviewing a former
> > football player about the release of adrenaline after a big game:
> >
> > "How long does it take for you to undrain yourself?"
> >
> > So I googled "undrain" and found 2130 hits (albeit with the usual
> > large proportion of overlap), mostly referring to recipes in which
> > one is told to undrain frozen strawberries, canned mushrooms or
> > carrots, etc., but also clogged sinks.  On the third page of hits I
> > noticed the first compositional use, for a technique you can use to
> > "undrain your brain".  But the vast majority are indeed redundant, =
> > 'drain'.  Predictably, the prefix in "undrain a drain/clog" can only
> > be redundant, while that in "unclog a drain" can never be.
> >
> > But while "undrain (oneself)" is probably not regional, it reminded
> > me of a verb that I think is, "unlax" (with the meaning 'relax', but
> > usually--if google cites can be believed--in transitive contexts,
> > although I could be wrong about that).  One cite led me to a curious
> > American Speech paper from awhile back:
> >
> > Margaret Reed (1932), "Intentional Mispronunciations".  American
> > Speech 7: 192-99.
> >
> > This covers what Reed took to be a fad among the "light-hearted
> > youth" of Central Westerners (she's writing from Nebraska) to
> > circulate...well, intentional mispronunciations.  (She's following up
> > on a paper by Louise Pound from 10 years earlier in _Dialect Notes_.)
> > Her categories include everything from adding or subtracting
> > syllables and restressing (antique as "an-tee-cue", "champeen",
> > "the-'ater"), tensing lax vowels ("genu-wine"), borrowing of "vulgar"
> > pronunciations ("agin", "extry", "who'd-a thunk it", "varmint"), "Al
> > Smith" English [a.k.a. Brooklynese, not a moniker Reed herself
> > applies] ("boid", "noives", "toity-toid street", "winegar woiks"),
> > the "extremely annoying" affectation of children's speech ("sojer",
> > "sword" [with /w/, as we've been discussing recently], "Injun", "ax"
> > for 'ask' [!-- she does add 'also archaic' for this], "itty bitty"),
> > Yiddishisms ("epple", "darlink", "dun't esk"), various other dialect
> > borrowings ("enyhoo", "pitcher" [for 'picture'], "divil"), blends and
> > folk etymological forms ("bumbershoot", "brass-ear", "animule",
> > "absotively"), misdivisions ("a tall", "a norange", but not "a whole
> > nother"), spelling pronunciations ("k-nife", "g-nat", "X-mas"), and
> > so on.  She ends with the wistful hope that while "human nature" may
> > be responsible for perpetuating this fad (or these fads--unclear how
> > many causal factors are involved), "surely, in its fullest and most
> > extreme form, the phenomenon is now passing its peak".
> >
> > So anyway, one of Reed's categories (p. 194) is what she terms '"Amos
> > and Andy" English, heard over the radio, which is so much in vogue at
> > the present time. It is not at all unusual to find the most
> > fastidious speakers employing such forms as:  [I sample here]
> > disremember or misremember, elebben, heabbn, recited (excited),
> > sebben, unlax (relax)".  Now several of her examples involve
> > /vn/>/bn/, a frequently encountered variant, not restricted to (but
> > maybe stereotypic of?) AAVE.  And of course we're dealing here with
> > dialect forms at several removes from direct observation.
> >
> > But I'm wondering specifically about her citing of "unlax", which
> > I've come across elsewhere noted as AAVE (although not necessarily
> > AAVE-specific).  DARE (at least the published volumes) can't help me
> > here, nor can HDAS, given the initial "u".  So what is the
> > distribution/history of "unlax"?  (It's unlisted in the OED, AHD, or
> > Wright's English Dialect Dictionary.)  Joan, do you have a draft
> > entry for this?
> >
> > LH
> >
> > P.S.  I am, of course, concerned only with the colloquial verb,
> > transitive or intransitive, meaning (roughly) 'relax', not with the
> > possible homonymous adjective, as in "/I/ is lax while /i/ is unlax".
> >
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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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