Heard on The Judges

[Laurence Horn]

At 10:53 AM -0500 1/26/08, Mark Mandel wrote:
>Meaning "Mom and her family", "John and his family"?
>
>m a m (not M&M or Eminem)

Basically, but not necessarily the respective family as such; could
be people they live with or work with or hang out with, depending on
the context, as I understand it.  I could be wrong, though, since
it's not native to me.  I wonder if there's a distinction between
those areas in which the last vowel is a schwa and those where it's
an [E].

LH

>
>On Jan 26, 2008 12:05 AM, Dave Hause <dwhause at jobe.net> wrote:
>>>>
>
>>  My wife uses that (central Illinois but idiolect probably mostly from her
>>  grandmother - southern Indiana/northern Kentucky) or at least almost - it
>>  sounds to me more like "Mom 'n 'em"and the "them" may be no more than her
>>  mother's sister.
>>  Dave Hause, dwhause at jobe.net
>>  Waynesville, MO
>>  ----- Original Message -----
>>  From: "Laurence Horn" <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
>>
>>  "Mommanem" etc. is a shibboleth of Pittsburghese.
>>
><<<
><http://www.americandialect.org>
>
>Wilson had written:
>>>>
>
>>  The speaker was a late-thirtyish white man from Saint Louis:
>>
>>  "I know that it was _John-nem_ [nEm] on the boat."
>>
><<<
>
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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org