RI cabinet was: Re: non-coda r-loss

[Wilson Gray]

Actually, I really *didn't* know that! Harvard calls itself an
"international university." As a consequence, there aren't a lot of
locals around. Indeed, I once had to prevent the "regular" students
from making fun of the accent of one of the few local students that
worked for me. In that case, it became hip to pronounce "card" - we
still used IBM punchcards, at that time, and "card-pulling" was a
student job - as "cad." The poor townie - in the general sense;
locally, a "townie" is someone from Charlestown - accustomed to
hearing "card" pronounced approximately that way, had no idea that his
dialect was being mocked.

Besides, the anti-busing riots and such were occurring at the time
that I came here and I learned to avoid anyone with a local accent, in
much the same way that I learned to stay away from people with the
ugly, local 'breaking" accent - be-ad, me-ad, etc. - in Saint Louis,
which, ironically, is a pronunciation widely used today in greater
Boston.

IAC, my real point is that I've never had an ice cream soda or a
milkshake in my entire life, under any name. By the time that "We
don't serve colored" had ceased to be the national mantra, I no longer
cared about this stuff. Hence, I've never been in an ice cream parlor
anywhere. So, of course, I wouldn't know that there were local terms
different from the national terms, even the though I've in the greater
Boston area since 1972.

-Wilson

On Sat, Jun 20, 2009 at 6:06 PM, Joel S. Berson<Berson at att.net> wrote:
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> 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: RI cabinet was: Re: non-coda r-loss
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> At 6/20/2009 04:31 PM, Wilson Gray wrote:
>>Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
>>
>>There's a local term for "ice cream soda" or "milkshake"? I didn't know that!
>
> Wilson, I assume in the above you're playing a
> joker card. Â Having worked in Cambridge at the
> Harvard libraries, you surely know that the
> Boston area has a local term for (New York
> City's) "ice cream soda". Â It is (or was, in our
> day) "frappe". Â When I first arrived in the
> Boston area as a precocious graduate student, I
> was told in no uncertain terms that that was what I needed to ask for.
>
> Joel
>
>
>>[Here, Wilson plays the race card]
>>
>>Probably because, when I was "coming up," as is said in BE and,
>>possibly, in SE in general, colored weren't allowed access to foods as
>>these. Of course, had we known exactly what they were, we could have
>>made them ourselves, at home, i suppose. But they're only literary
>>terms for me.
>>
>>Needless to say, I could easily get either or both of these anywhere
>>in the greater Boston area. But now, I don't care.
>>
>>OTOH, I *love* barbecued "snoots" (i.e. swine snouts), but they're
>>difficult to come by, in these parts, since such offal is generally
>>not regarded as a foodstuff, except when inside of a hot dog.
>>
>>-Wilson
>>
>>On Fri, Jun 19, 2009 at 4:45 PM, Laurence Horn<laurence.horn at yale.edu> wrote:
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>> > Sender: Â  Â  Â  American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> > Poster: Â  Â  Â  Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
>> > Subject: Â  Â  Â Re: RI cabinet was: Re: non-coda r-loss
>> >
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> >
>> > At 11:34 AM -0400 6/19/09, Amy West wrote:
>> >>>Date: Â  Â Thu, 18 Jun 2009 11:20:10 -0400
>> >>>From: Â  Â Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
>> >>>Subject: Re: Non-coda r-loss in Southern speech?
>> >>>
>> >>>At 5:40 AM -0400 6/18/09, Bill Palmer wrote:
>> >>> Â >
>> >>>>I was always taken with the unusual names
>> for various beverages in Boston:
>> >>>>
>> >>>>Soda = "tonic"
>> >>>>Ice cream soda = "cabinet"
>> >>>
>> >>>From what I've read and seen, "cabinet" is
>> >>>largely if not entirely restricted to Rhode
>> >>>Island, while I have encountered "tonic" in
>> >>>Boston (for 'soft drink') and "frappe" in both
>> >>>Mass. and R.I.
>> >>>
>> >>>LH
>> >>
>> >>You are correct about "cabinet", though it also creeps into the areas
>> >>of CT and MA that border RI. But I believe "cabinet" is also a
>> >>milkshake term.
>> >>
>> > Yes, it's used for both milkshakes and ice cream sodas. Â "Coffee
>> > cabinets" were available in a shop I visited in Waverly, RI (just
>> > over the CT line), but I can't remember whether it was a milk shake
>> > or an ice cream soda (with coffee syrup and coffee ice cream).
>> >
>> > LH
>> >
>> > ------------------------------------------------------------
>> > The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>> >
>>
>>
>>
>>--
>>-Wilson
>>ннн
>>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
>
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> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>



--
-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