Terlet

[Jonathan Lighter]

The speech of the principal Bowery Boys, Leo Gorcey and Huntz Hall, never
seemed quite natural to me, partly because Hall was always clowning for
effect (he does it less in _A Walk in the Sun_), and Gorcey just sounded
extreme.  My wife, however, who grew up in Queens, thinks Gorcey's
mannerisms were entirely legit.

In some of their movies, at least some of the BBs pronounce "my" as "me,"
something I never heard from any native New Yorker, but which Edward
Townsend attributed to his own "Bowery Boy" caricature, "Chimmie Fadden," in
stories written in the 1890s.

Gorcey and Hall sound less extreme when out of character in various YouTube
clips.

You can hear James Cagney pronouce "murder" here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OruJBWVaY8Q&feature=related

JL



On Mon, Mar 22, 2010 at 11:57 AM, Paul Johnston <paul.johnston at wmich.edu>wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Paul Johnston <paul.johnston at WMICH.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: Terlet
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> 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:
>
> > ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> > -----------------------
> > 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:
> >>
> >>> ---------------------- 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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