Terlet

[Jonathan Lighter]

My grandfather absolutely had a rhotic element in "terlet" (and "erl") as
well as in "boid" and "thoity-thoid."  In fact, "boid" and "thoid" don't
*look* anything like they sounded. The intial vowel (or part of the
diphthong) was, as Larry suggests, / ^ /, perhaps slightly fronted.

The "r" in question, however, was not maximally articulated.

I remember making the Archie Bunker connection the evening the show
premiered. It may be that I've never heard a closer approximation of my
grandfather's phonology in the media - and rarely in real life.

JL



On Mon, Mar 22, 2010 at 10:05 AM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu>wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: Terlet
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> 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
> >>>
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