William Safire on the kitchen sink

[Joseph Salmons]

Interesting. I don't recall that pronunciation from the south or
Texas, but the z-ful pronunciation of 'sink' is well known in
Wisconsin, where it's popularly associated with people of Dutch
ancestry. (I have no evidence on whether that's true or to what extent
it might be.)

Joe


On Mar 30, 2008, at 1:47 PM, Wilson Gray wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      William Safire on the kitchen sink
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> In his article on the kitchen sink in today's NYT Mag, Safire notes
> that the kitchen sink was once an object made of a "sheet of _zinc_
> over wood ..."
>
> Perhaps this is the reason that my late, East-Texas-born grandmother
> always referred to our kitchen sink, which differed in no way from the
> usual enameled kitchen sink standard in houses built back in the day,
> as "the _zinc_," though she referred to the bathroom sink only as "the
> _sink_."
>
> -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
>
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