Terlet

[Dan Goncharoff]

I am surprised no one has mentioned the old "Bowery Boys" movies, which I
remember capturing this accent well.

For some reason, no one gives any credit to the school system of NYC for
eliminating the rhotic "erl" and the hypercorrective "boid". My parents were
born in Manhattan in the 20s/30s, and were taught to speak correctly. Many
of their peers, especially outside of Manhattan, were not.

DanG

On Mon, Mar 22, 2010 at 10:40 AM, Jonathan Lighter
<wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com>wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: Terlet
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> 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:
>
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> > 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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