The Boy in the Striped Pajamas

[Neal Whitman]

In my pile of unfinished posts there's one whose working title is "The
Stupid Striped Shirt". I tell about sitting on a swing in the playground at
preschool (which we called nursery school at the time), thinking about the
striped shirt I had on, and wondering why my mom pronounced "striped" as
[strajpId]. I pronounced it that way, too, just because that was the form
I'd learned, but as I thought about it, I couldn't see any reason why the
word shouldn't be pronounced as [strajpt], and decided that from then on,
that's how I've pronounced it. Cognitive dissonance resolved! I was OK with
[wIkId] for "wicked" and [crUkId] for "crooked" because they were
monomorphemic to me, but "striped" was clearly "stripe" plus "ed".

Your semantic distinction between the two pronunciations is a new one to me.
Do others have it?

Neal Whitman
Home: 614 501-1890
Cell: 614 260-1622
Email: nwhitman at ameritech.net
Blog: http://literalminded.wordpress.com

----- Original Message -----
From: "Wilson Gray" <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
To: <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
Sent: Wednesday, March 11, 2009 1:36 AM
Subject: The Boy in the Striped Pajamas


> ---------------------- Information from the mail
> header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      The Boy in the Striped Pajamas
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> In every ad that I've heard for the CD of this movie, the voiceover
> *always* pronounces "striped" as [strajpt]. To my ear, this is passing
> strange. The pronunciation "should," i.e. perhaps only IMO and in that
> of others of my ilk, if any, be [strajpId]. The ADJ, for me, is
> [strajpId]; [strajpt] is the PPP. If an object is striped because
> that's the way it normally is, as a tiger or a concentration-camp
> uniform, then it's [strajpId]. If an object has stripes because it
> somehow got stripes added to it later, like a crosswalk painted onto a
> black, asphalt street surface, then that portion of the street has
> been [strajpt].
>
> It's as jarring as hearing "beloved [bIl^vd] *by*" instead of "loved
> by" or "beloved [bil^vId] *of*"
>
> Saint Louis must have been a speech-island in more than phonology. Or
> maybe it is, or was, a feature of BE, since I've lived among
> BE-speakers from places other than Saint Louis without ever noticing a
> failure to make these distinctions. Or maybe it's just old-fashioned,
> like my grandparents using "wheel," long after "bicycle" was well on
> its way to becoming "bike."
>
> (For younger readers: a bike was once normally called a "wheel."
> Strange, but true. Lots of traditional bike-riding organizations still
> call their members "wheelmen," for that reason.)
>
> -Wilson
> ________
>
> Some 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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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org