Terlet

[Paul Johnston]

This would be a pronunciation used by someone who was non-rhotic most
of the time.   hence, the hypercorrection for the merged [^I] or [@I].

I'm pretty sure my grandmother (b. 1879, Brooklyn) said this
occasionally, though I'm not sure it wouldn't be 'in quotation
marks', like saying "It choips like a boid" or "Toity-toid and toid",
which my dad would say, even though he never used [@I] in normal speech.

There's also the Dodger fan from the early '30s who saw Waite Hoyt,
at the end of his career, get injured and said "Jesus!  Hert's hoit!"

By the way, for any New Yorkers who stayed around-- what's the status
of [@I] at present?  I'm a suburb kid, but I used to work in the
City, and I have heard it occasionally from  working-class guys who
were my age (b. 1950), but never from anybody much younger than me.
Offhand, from my observations,it seemed to survive better in Hudson
County, NJ  than anywhere in NYC, although Brooklynites could trot it
out as a performance form.  The [@I] variant used to go way up the
social scale in my grandmother's generation (though [^I] was always a
working-class variant), so if it's gone, it really was quite a
precipitous decline.


On Mar 22, 2010, at 9:55 AM, Joel S. Berson wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "Joel S. Berson" <Berson at ATT.NET>
> Subject:      Re: Terlet
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> ---------
>
> 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
>
>
>> Paul Johnston
>> On Mar 21, 2010, at 4:17 PM, Sam Clements wrote:
>>
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>>> 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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>>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>>
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>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
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