The Boy in the Striped Pajamas

[Wilson Gray]

Oh, Neal! Your poor mother! And consider the rhythm lost in your
working title, if "striped" is pronounced [strajpt]! My word, man!
Have you no soul?! (As you know, we colored have a thing about
rhythm.)

The Stupid, [strajpt] Shirt?!

Not

The Stupid, [strajpId] Shirt?!

Neal, you've broken the heart of an old man, uh, a masculine senior citizen.

-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



On Wed, Mar 11, 2009 at 9:46 AM, Neal Whitman <nwhitman at ameritech.net> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender: Â  Â  Â  American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster: Â  Â  Â  Neal Whitman <nwhitman at AMERITECH.NET>
> Subject: Â  Â  Â Re: The Boy in the Striped Pajamas
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> 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: 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 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
>>
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>
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>

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