Terlet

[Alison Murie]

On Mar 22, 2010, at 1:03 PM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: Terlet
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> 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:
>
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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:
>>
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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:
>>>>
>>>>> ---------------------- 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
>>>>>
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I've been racking my brain to remember who it was on the radio in the
'30s & '40s that always pronounced  /er/ or /ir/  as /oi/.  Jimmy
Durante came to mind, but I don't think he was the one (he was born on
the lower east side in the 1890s).  Now I think it may have been
William Bendix.  Wilson, do you remember?  Or anyone who has listened
to the resurrected radio programs if those days?
AM

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