Haverhill and tonic

[Wilson Gray]

Here's another:

The first day that I worked as circ supervisor at Widener, my student
assistants were a mixture of locals and Harvard students from the
States and about any other place in the world that you can think of.
IAC, I answered the phone and someone asked to speak to Kevin Tanney.
After the poor guy had called back several times, a local overheard my
end of the conversation, got my attention, and said, "That's Kevin
Tanney right there!"

Instead of asking around, I had merely scanned the list of names of
the assistants, interpreting them according to my own internal
phonology.

It turned out that I had read Kevin Tierney's name on the list, but I
had no idea, at the time, that, locally, "Tierney" [tirni] is
pronounced, for all practical purposes, as [tI&ni], which I hear as
"Tanney.".

At that time, my head student assistant was Andrew Garrett. Those
active in the field of linguistics may be familiar with his name.

-Wilson

On Mon, Jul 20, 2009 at 10:09 AM, Joel S. Berson<Berson at att.net> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender: Â  Â  Â  American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster: Â  Â  Â  "Joel S. Berson" <Berson at ATT.NET>
> Subject: Â  Â  Â Re: Haverhill and tonic
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> At 7/20/2009 12:37 AM, Your Name wrote:
>>In a message dated 7/20/2009 12:00:46 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
>>LISTSERV at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU [AKS Wilson] writes:
>>
>>my  friend who uses "tonic" for soda / pop / soda pop / soda
>>water, etc., is  from Haverhill [hEIvr at l] and not from the city.
>
> Residents of the City of Haverhill would be offended. Â Now if Wilson
> had written "not from the big city" ...
>
>
>>-Wilson
>>
>>
>>FWIW, my grandmother, a city-of-Boston native, always called it tonic as
>>well.    How old is your friend?  Maybe the difference is  generational
>>rather than geographical.
>>
>>Rosemarie
>
> When I came to the gown city (Cambridge) in the mid-50s, I was told
> to say "tonic" -- and "frappe". Â And some locals did.
>
> Joel
>
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--
-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.
-----
-Mark Twain

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