Stanley Crouch ...

Tue Jun 16 00:28:27 UTC 2009

>From thefreedictionary.com
Click the flags to hear pronunciation, and you hear that the UK are better with their t's than the USA.  The phonetic notation (which of course doesn't copy) shows both as ~buetee (in truespel).

boo·ty 1 (bt)
n. pl. boo·ties
1. Plunder taken from an enemy in time of war.
2. Goods or property seized by force or piracy.
3. A valuable prize, award, or gain.
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[Middle English botye (influenced by bote, advantage; see boot2), probably from Middle Low German bte, exchange.]
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boo·ty 2 (bt) also boo·dy (-d)
n. pl. boo·ties also boo·dies
1. Slang The buttocks.
2. Vulgar Slang
a. The vulva or vagina.
b. Sexual intercourse.

In USA when most folks say "booty" they change the "t" to a "d" and phonetically it's boody ~buedee instead of ~buetee.  And it's interesting to see it written "boody" which is as it sounds.  A true recognition of the consonant swap.

Tom Zurinskas, USA - CT20, TN3, NJ33, FL5+
see truespel.com

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender: American Dialect Society
> Poster: Wilson Gray
> Subject: Re: Stanley Crouch ...
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Don't BrE spekers, including West Indians, use [t] in a word like
> "botty"? As long as, for me, anyway, "boody" was never written out,
> the possibility that it might be "booty" never entered my mind. The
> spelling was fixed for me - and, apparently, also for Stanley Crouch -
> by the grade-school rhyme:
>
> I went downtown
> To see Miss Moody
> Paid two cent(s)
> To see her boody
>
> Of course, [t] is always used in the emphatic pronunciation, usually
> "boo-TAY" [,bu 'tej] in the form that I'm most accustomed to hearing.
> OTOH, I've long since aged out of
> keeping up with contemporary slang. There are a few hiphop records
> that I like that allow me to keep up with such things as the fact that
> "drank," in addition to being the usual BE pronunciation of "drink,"
> but is now also the name of a kind of drink.
>
> In some cases, hiphop merely shows the Labov was right, forty year
> ago: Bad Azimiz, "Bad as I'm is," for sE "(as) tough as I am."
>
> You know, sometimes, I don't notice BE peculiarities from people whose
> speech I'm accustomed to hearing. Back at L.A. Water & Power, I knew a
> couple of fellow Texans, one black, Joseph [dZowz at p] and the other
> Texican, Federico. Joseph always addressed Federico as "Feddreka"
> [,fEd 'drik@]. I found this passing strange. Till, about thirty years
> later, I noticed that, e.g. my own mother also said "Feddreka" and
> also said things like "San'n Tonya" [s&n at n tonj@] for "San Antonio."
>
> -Wilson
>
>
> On Mon, Jun 15, 2009 at 11:19 AM, Jonathan
> Lighter wrote:
>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
>> Sender: Â Â Â American Dialect Society
>> Poster: Â Â Â Jonathan Lighter
>> Subject: Â Â Â Re: Stanley Crouch ...
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> My suggestion of Wolof was (atypically) only partly facetious. Since basic
>> sexual terms of this sort tend to be quite old, {booty/boody} might well be
>> a rare pre-slavery survival, particularly since it is well attested as far
>> back as the 1920s, if not a decade earlier (see HDAS), and few white
>> speakers were familiar with it till recent years.
>>
>> Have I already tell the story of the senior professor who asked me, only
>> five or six years ago, if I knew why students laughed and looked
>> astonishe when he told them that early explorers "were only interested in
>> booty"?
>>
>> A derivation from "body" is conceivable, but the vowel shift would be
>> unusual (I think).
>>
>> But "botty"? Naaaaaah.
>>
>> JL
>>
>> On Mon, Jun 15, 2009 at 9:56 AM, Wilson Gray wrote:
>>
>>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>>> -----------------------
>>> Sender: Â Â Â American Dialect Society
>>> Poster: Â Â Â Wilson Gray
>>> Subject: Â Â Â Re: Stanley Crouch ...
>>>
>>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------=
>> ------
>>>
>>> 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 Â 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
>>> wrote:
>>>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>>> -----------------------
>>>> Sender: =C2 Â =C2 Â =C2 Â American Dialect Society>>>
>>>> Poster: =C2 Â =C2 Â =C2 Â Jonathan Lighter
>>>> Subject: =C2 Â =C2 Â =C2 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, i=
>> t
>>>> would seem, only in the works of English writers. The 1924 ex., from th=
>> e
>>>> English novelist Ronald Firbank, is in BE, but the BE of a fictional
>>>> country. =C2 (Firbank had originally titled his book _Sorrow in Sunligh=
>> t_,
>>> but
>>>> his U.S. publisher (Brentano's) thought they'd sell more under the titl=
>> e
>>>> _Prancing Nigger_. =C2 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 t=
>> he
>>>> etymon, but so might something nobody's yet thought of. =C2 Wolof?
>>>>
>>>> JL
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Sun, Jun 14, 2009 at 6:13 PM, Wilson Gray wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>>>>> -----------------------
>>>>> Sender: =C2 Â =C2 Â =C2 Â American Dialect Society>> U>
>>>>> Poster: =C2 Â =C2 Â =C2 Â Wilson Gray
>>>>> Subject: =C2 Â =C2 Â =C2 Stanley Crouch ...
>>> Â>>
>>>>>
>>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------=
>> =3D
>>>> ------
>>>>>
>>>>> 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
>>>>> =3D96=3D96=3D96
>>>>> 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
>>>>>
>>>>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>>>>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>>>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> -Wilson
>>> =96=96=96
>>> Â 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
>>>
>>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>>>
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>>
>
>
>
> --
> -Wilson
> â€“â€“â€“
> 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
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
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