Anglicisms

[Robin Hamilton]

A couple of comments on Wilson's list of Anglicisms.

            > I reckon you

Whatever this is, it's not an Anglicism, and it's interesting that Wilson
sees it as alien.  I'd hit on it via B-Movie USAmerican Westerns -- "I
reckon you better mosey outa this town pronto, pardner, before the marshal
sees you,"  spoken by a grizzled barfly sitting on the stoop of Tom
Sherman's Barroom chewing tobacco and whittling on a piece of wood.

Possibly it crops up in the mouth of Lobey Dosser, but WWIK?

For those who don't:

"At first glance, Calton Creek is no different from a score of frontier
towns that sprung up around the New Mexico and Arizona border during the
late 19th century.

Careful inspection however, would reveal that its inhabitants were made up
exclusively of émigrés from Glasgow, Scotland.

Bud Neill's classic comic strip was first published in 1949 in Glasgow's
Evening Times. It charts the exploits of Lobey Dosser, the sheriff of Calton
Creek, from his journey from Scotland to Arizona, to his clashes with his
arch-enemy, Rank Bajin."
                    -- http://www.netsavvy.co.uk/lobey/set.htm

        > Glo?al stop (I recognize that the [?] can now hardly be said to be
        > foreign to AmE - with especial ;-) reference to BE - but I "come
from
        > a different school.")

Specifically Glasgow and the surrounding regions -- or at least
predominantly in that area.  Most marked in working class speech, both
Catholic and Protestant, but I suspect also there but simply less apparent
in the lect of us more educated yins.

Thinking of which, Glasgow vernacular speech shares with AAVE the perfectly
sensible reinstatement of the distinction between the second-person singular
and plural, catastrophically lost in SE, both spoken and written, when
"thou" dropped out of fashion.

Thus the phrase, "Ur youz comin doon tae the pub?" addressed to only one
person, would provoke a look of incredulity, and no doubt the retort, "Whit
ur yi oan aboot?  See yir no wan ay uz, jimmy."

It's not that urban vernacular speech on both sides of the Pond doesn't have
rules, just that it has different rules.  The correct form of the above
would "read", "Ur yi comin doon tae the pub?"

            Traditional Glasgow Joke:

Teacher (to new pupil):      "What's your name, boy?"
Pupil:                                 "Pa??erson, sir, with two t's."

Robin

_________________________________________


----- Original Message -----
From: "Wilson Gray" <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
To: <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
Sent: Monday, February 28, 2011 3:40 PM
Subject: Anglicisms


> ---------------------- Information from the mail
> header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Anglicisms
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Normally, I avoid all Briticisms, unless it's clear to the listener
> that I'm using a random such only for its entertainment value.
>
> That's right up your street
> I reckon you
> Got br[a]ss in pocket
> Glo?al stop (I recognize that the [?] can now hardly be said to be
> foreign to AmE - with especial ;-) reference to BE - but I "come from
> a different school.")
>
> Nevertheless, I've caught myself using the UK "on my own," etc. in
> place of the genuine US "(all) by myself" or "alone," etc. for real!
>
> Youneverknow.
>
> WRT [?]: For a very long time, I was under the impression that I knew
> only one (black) American, whom I didn't meet until I was 23, and he
> used this segment in all of the places in which it's possible to
> articulate it.
>
> Then, last week, I flashed on a peculiar pronunciation of _Saturday_
> used by the black polloi in Marshall and it suddenly came clear to me
> that what was "peculiar" was the occurrence of therein of a glottal
> stop. Instead of the boojie, near-standard pronunciation used in our
> household - i.e. just ah-ruh-lessness - they used
>
> [sA?IdI]
>
> I can't recall noticing any other unusual-IMO use of glottal stop in
> BE before 1961. Memory is interpretation, not information. So,
>
> Youneverknow.
>
> --
> -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
>
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