Is the Hudson Valley Dialect still alive?

[Dan Goodman]

"Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
Poster:       Paul Johnston <paul.johnston at WMICH.EDU>
Subject:      Re: Is the Hudson Valley Dialect still alive?
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"As someone who comes from the area and NOT from NYC, I'd say the
pronunciation system is very much so, though there seems to be a
difference between say, Albany and NYC outer suburbia."

What counts as outer suburbia currently?  I'm told that children who grow
up in Kingston now sound as if they're from NYC.  And real estate ads for
houses in Ellenville (Ulster County, about fifteen miles west of the
Hudson)say it's only an hour forty minutes commute to Manhattan.  (Which
is what Google Maps says -- with the disclaimer that it doesn't take
traffic congestion, bad weather, and road repair into consideration.)

And how different is the pronunciation from the Upstate dialect?

"As a vocabulary--well, traditional vocab. is highly recessive in most of
the Northeast but I'm sure you could find a layer of words shared by
NYC and the old Hudson Valley of more recent origin."

Terms I grew up using which I've had trouble with in the Twin Cities but
not in NYC:  "String beans," though when I've slipped and said this
instead of "green beans," I've been understood.  "Soda" used to be a
slight problem, this being a "pop" area; but "soda" has been making
inroads.  "Regular tea" for what used to be just called "tea" (before
designer teas became common); the local term is "black tea" (except in
Oriental restaurants.)

"A story about Hudson Valley vocab: when I was in high school, I did a
project on dialect vocabulary, and found the word 'olicook' =
'doughnut' listed as Hudson Valley.  I asked my mother (Monroe, NY
from 1914 to 1956, when the place was rural and tiny) if she knew
it.  She didn't, and said she'd never heard it, from her mother (b.
1879, Brooklyn), fellow Monrovians, or anyone.  Neither had I--until
I came out here to West Michigan, and found students' grandparents,
who not only knew what it was, but gave it a Dutch plural -
[ouliku:k at n] (the -n shows the NE Dutch background of the Grand
Rapids/Holland area; Standard Dutch would write -en, but pronounce -e)."

Which brings up another question:  influence of languages other than
Dutch. The "Dutch" founders of New Paltz were French-speaking religious
refugees from the Spanish Netherlands who had first resettled in the
Palatinite; I would expect that they spoke some mixture of French and Low
German.  I think it likely that the settlers in Ireland Corners spoke
Ulster Scots.  Other languages included German, and possibly Frisian.

On Sep 25, 2009, at 2:51 PM, Dan Goodman wrote:


> > ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> > As I understand it (note:  I'm very much an amateur), the Hudson
> > Valley
> > Dialect's status as a separate dialect was based on words not found
> > elsewhere.  Some of those words have spread; others have gone out
> > of use.
> >


--
Dan Goodman
"I have always depended on the kindness of stranglers."
Tennessee Williams, A Streetcar Named Expire
Journal http://dsgood.livejournal.com
Futures http://clerkfuturist.wordpress.com
Mirror Journal http://dsgood.insanejournal.com
Mirror 2 http://dsgood.wordpress.com
Links http://del.icio.us/dsgood

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org