Heard on Springer: _baby daddy_, etc.

Wilson Gray hwgray at GMAIL.COM
Fri Apr 22 18:37:59 UTC 2011


Twenty-ish white woman, Mary, of ordinary Northern speech, to her
sister, Jane, who is marrying Mary;s former boyfriend:

"It's in the code! Part of the family code! You don't mess with a
sister's boyfriend *or* her _baby daddy_! How's my son going to feel,
when he's old enough to know that his father is married to his _aunt
('ahnt')_?!"

Twenty-ish white male of ordinary Northern speech:

"I was living in the house of my _aunt ('ant')_.


FWIW, IME, the distribution of [ant] vs. [Ant] among white speakers
and among black speakers seems to be random. The larger difference,
IMO. is that BE-speakers, IME, are more likely to use the diminutive
"auntie" [an.ti] vs. [An.ti] (> [e(I}n.ti]). I mark the syllable
boundary because the pronunciation is usually "ON-tee," vs. "AN-tee"
(> "ANE-tee).

Late-twenty-ish, black male of ordinary, Northern-BE speech:

"I'm a playa! I juggles! I juggles many women! I'm a _jugular_!" (Very
likely a hypercorrection, IMO.)

Twenty-ish, urban-Southern BE-speaker from Montgomery, AL:

"My gi[r]lfriend..."

with a really *serious* [r], like "gurrrfrin." My father, a
rural-Southern BE-speaker from the greater-Birmingham area who never
met a pre-consonantal ahra that he couldn't delete, must be spinning
in his grave!

--
-Wilson
-----
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"---a strange complaint
to come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-Mark Twain

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org



More information about the Ads-l mailing list