"at all" = "a tall"

[Wilson Gray]

I've never heard it pronounced any other way by BE speakers of my
parents' generation and older.
It's still used by black people my age and younger who still live
behind The Cotton Curtain. This pronunciation used in the old horse
operas,with the comic-relief sidekicks taking it all the way to [ei
tOl], i.e., "A tall, with "A" stressed and given its alphabet
pronunciation.

-Wilson

On Fri, Sep 5, 2008 at 6:57 PM, Scot LaFaive <slafaive at gmail.com> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Scot LaFaive <slafaive at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      "at all" = "a tall"
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Have we done any work on this in ADS, DARE, or other databases/dictionaries?
> I recently heard my father clearly pronounce it as "a tall" and I'm curious
> about any info on the variation. Thanks.
>
> Scot
>
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> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>



--
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.
-----
-Mark Twain

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