rhythmic blends

[Wilson Gray]

Speaking of Noo-Yawk-ish, remember when Tony Curtis was laughed at for
saying, in some long- forgotten swashbuckler,

"Yonda is my fadda's castle"?

I didn't see the movie, whatever it was. So, I have no opinion - well,
IMO, he probably *didn't* say it - as to what Curtis actually said.
But, IAC, he was famous for fifteen minutes for *supposedly* having
spoken thus.

He probably got pretty tired of having to laugh it off, except when he
was on his way to the bank.

-Wilson

On Sun, Jul 11, 2010 at 12:46 PM, Jonathan Lighter
<wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      rhythmic blends
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Hilton Als (b. 1961) writes in the current _New Yorker_ of Al Pacino's
> speech in the current _Merchant of Venice_:
>
> "Pacino...brings to Shylock that appealing New York City diction, a
> combination of black, Jewish, and Puerto Rican rhythms."
>
> What, no Italian?  (Dutch used to be invoked, but now everybody knows that's
> a stretch.)  I didn't notice any particular rhythmic substrates in Pacino's
> film Shylock, except for "Jewish" - I guess Als means "Yiddish" (after all,
> it *is* Shylock) - and I marvel at anyone's ability to isolate the others,
> not just in Pacino's case but in NYC diction generally.
>
> Pop journalists like to mention "speech rhythms."  That seems to be the
> preferred idiom for all dialectal and idiolectical elements that really
> are too complex for pop-media discussion.
>
> It wasn't long ago - certainly in the '50s and '60s - that working-class
> diction like Pacino's was usually considered "unappealing."  So some things
> do change for the better.
>
> JL
>
> --
> "If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."
>
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--
-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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