Stanley Crouch ...

[Wilson Gray]

I can understand that, since there are hundreds of examples of a clear
[t]-pronunciation to be heard among any group of free-range (no white
people present) BE-speakers. I term this phenomenon "emphatic
devoicing," since it - the devoicing of the underlying /d/ - normally
occurs when the pronunciation is emphasized. Of course, as far as I
can tell, off the top of my head at, at least for me, the crack of
dawn, when I'm not fully awake, there's nothing more than my personal
analysis of the facts to prevent the mirror-image of this argument
from applying: the underlying /t/ appears under emphasis.

However, there are other examples that can be found, only in my
memory, unfortunately, that can be said to support my analysis. For
example, there's a song that begins with a woman saying to her man:

"I'm leavin' you, dat-ty!" [d& tI]

Unfortunately, I heard this song something a half-century ago and
there's not much hope of my being able to track it down. If it wasn't
for the woman's pronunciation of "daddy" as "datty" (the rest of the
song is of no interest: the man begging her not to leave) I probably
wouldn't remember  anything of this song at all.

As coincidence would have it, last evening, on some cop-show re-run, I
believe it was, a non-American black speaker says, abstracting away
from his foreign accent, to the token white, female cop, "You have a
nice body." But, what he said *could* have been understood as, "You
have a nice _boody_." were it not for the fact that the speaker hadn't
had a chance to see the woman's arse, as the scene was staged.

I found that interesting, but, of course, not probative - or even
indicative - in any useful sense. The black speaker was a foreigner in
the context of the show, but he very well could have been some random
actor from Marshall, Texas, in real life, for all that I know! :-)

-Wilson

On Sun, Jun 14, 2009 at 7:59 PM, Jonathan Lighter<wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com> wrote:
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> Sender: Â  Â  Â  American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster: Â  Â  Â  Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject: Â  Â  Â Re: Stanley Crouch ...
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Not only does the OED prefer {booty}, it tells us that it's "Prob. [_sic_]
> an altered form of _botty_ *n."*
> **
> Except that "botty" is a nursery euphemism recorded it till recently, it
> would seem, only in the works of English writers. The 1924 ex., from the
> English novelist Ronald Firbank, is in BE, but the BE of a fictional
> country. Â (Firbank had originally titled his book _Sorrow in Sunlight_, but
> his U.S. publisher (Brentano's) thought they'd sell more under the title
> _Prancing Nigger_. Â It is said that W.E.B DuBois enjoyed the book despite
> its American title.
>
> HDAS, under the pressure of numbers, went with {booty} as the lemma, though
> {boody} is cross-referenced to it. I suppose SE "booty" could well be the
> etymon, but so might something nobody's yet thought of. Â Wolof?
>
> JL
>
>
> On Sun, Jun 14, 2009 at 6:13 PM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:
>
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>> -----------------------
>> Sender: Â  Â  Â  American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> Poster: Â  Â  Â  Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
>> Subject: Â  Â  Â Stanley Crouch ...
>>
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------=
> ------
>>
>> is the name of the author who has used in print the spelling "boody,"
>> preferred by this writer, in place of the unfortunately probably
>> now-standard spelling, "booty," which, among other things, falls
>> together with "booty" in the pirate sense and in other senses (is
>> anyone else familiar with the food product named, My Sister's Booty?)
>>
>> The reviewer in the NYTBR *sic*-ed "boody." It took me about a week to
>> get that it was the spelling to which the *sic* referred, _boody_
>> having been my mental image of the spelling of the term since I was
>> about five years old.
>>
>> Of course, this is hardly the only time that a BE obscenity has been
>> reduced to an ordinary, everyday term in standard English, cf. "hit
>> that (ass)," "tap that (ass)," most recently. There was even a
>> commericial in which a *woman* says about a passing man, "I could
>> _hit_ that." Aaarrrggghhh!!!
>>
>> Though The Who don't mention it, a good reason to die before you get
>> old is to avoid having to feel the language shift under your feet.
>>
>> BTW, to give the devil his - well, history its - due, The Bootery, the
>> name of a former Saint Louis shoe store, was good for a chuckle
>> amongst colored kids, even back in the day.
>> --
>> -Wilson
>> =96=96=96
>> 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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>>
>
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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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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org