Terlet

[Laurence Horn]

At 9:55 AM -0400 3/22/10, Joel S. Berson wrote:
>At 3/22/2010 09:45 AM, Paul Johnston wrote:
>>Used to be New York City/Brooklyn/Hudson County, NJ as a
>>hypercorrection, reflecting the verse/voice (or bird/Boyd) merger.  I
>>have heard it, but only from really old speakers.
>
>What would an a-rhotic Brooklynite say?
>
>Joel

My impression is that the merger yields something closer to [t^ilIt]
or [b^id], with a central onset, but "boyd" is as close as the
standard orthography lets us get, so the stereotype ends up "boyd"
and doesn't represent the centralized (and non-rounded) onset of
"toilet".  But then there's probably a lot of variation on the exact
location of the diphthong.

LH

>
>>Paul Johnston
>>On Mar 21, 2010, at 4:17 PM, Sam Clements wrote:
>>
>>>---------------------- Information from the mail header
>>>-----------------------
>>>Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>>>Poster:       Sam Clements <SClements at NEO.RR.COM>
>>>Subject:      Terlet
>>>----------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>---------
>>>
>>>>From what dialect/region would one find the word "terlet" to mean =
>>>"toilet?"
>>>
>>>Sam Clements
>>>
>>>------------------------------------------------------------
>>>The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>>
>>------------------------------------------------------------
>>The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>
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>The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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