"at all" = "a tall"

[Marc Velasco]

Sounds mostly Southern to me, and perhaps vaguely British as well.

On Fri, Sep 5, 2008 at 9:27 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: "at all" = "a tall"
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> 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:
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> > 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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>
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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.
> -----
> -Mark Twain
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