eye dialect was RE: nekkid

[Jonathan Lighter]

That's right. I say "wuz," which means "was," but plenty of people say
"waz," which not only means "was," but which I write as "waz" to prevent
confusion with "was," i.e., "wuz."

JL

On Sun, Mar 13, 2011 at 6:34 PM, Gordon, Matthew J.
<GordonMJ at missouri.edu>wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "Gordon, Matthew J." <GordonMJ at MISSOURI.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: eye dialect was RE: nekkid
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> The author gets to decide. People who pronounce 'naked' as [nEkId] may
> interpret 'nekkid' as eye dialect, but that doesn't mean the author intended
> it as such. Many readers today would look at spellings like "wut, w'at, wot'
> as eye dialect for "what," but they were used in the 19th-cen. to indicate
> marked pronunciations.
>
> -Matt
> ________________________________________
> From: American Dialect Society [ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf Of
> Charles C Doyle [cdoyle at UGA.EDU]
> Sent: Sunday, March 13, 2011 5:14 PM
>  To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> Subject: Re: eye dialect was RE: nekkid
>
> But who gets to decide what pronunciations a "marked" and what "unmarked"?
>  That's the question that Wilson and I were raising.
>
> For some of us, the pronunciation [nEkId] is, so to speak, unmarked; so the
> spelling "nekkid" is, for us, eye dialect.
>
> And some of us don't pronunce "was" as if spelled "wuz."
>
> --Charlie
>
> ________________________________________
> From: American Dialect Society [ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] on behalf of
> Gordon, Matthew J. [GordonMJ at MISSOURI.EDU]
> Sent: Sunday, March 13, 2011 6:02 PM
>
>
> By way of clarification:
> "eye dialect" refers to respelling of words to reflect their unmarked
> pronunciation (e.g. wuz, iz, uv for was, is, of). The label comes from the
> fact that such forms appear to represent distinctive regional or social
> dialects but in fact represent the "standard" pronunciation. Thus, they are
> dialect for the eye not for the ear.
>
> Pronouncing words according to their spelling is usually called "spelling
> pronunciation."
>
> I think it's hard to argue that 'nekkid' is intended as eye dialect since
> it respells the word to represent a marked pronunciation (with /E/ instead
> of the unmarked /e/).
>
>
> -Matt Gordon
> ________________________________________
> From: American Dialect Society [ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf Of Tom
> Zurinskas [truespel at HOTMAIL.COM]
> Sent: Sunday, March 13, 2011 4:01 PM
> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> Subject: Re: nekkid
>
> Isn't "eye dialect" more like "mouth dialect".  It ain't one's eyes doing
> the talking.  Folks are just spelling how they talk, what their mouths are
> doing.  Their mouths do the talking, not their eyes.
>
> Shouldn't "eye dialect" refer to mispronouncing a word because of it's
> spelling, like saying for "Arkansas" are-CAN-zis (~Aarkkanzis) instead of
> ARE-kin-saw (~Aarkinsau).  That way the "eye" is creating the dialect from
> what it sees.
>
> I would assume "nekked" or "nekid" or "neckid" would work as well.  It's
> not a real word, so why not?  It's dialectspel, spelling how your talking in
> a tradspel (traditional spelling) kind of way.
>
>
> Tom Zurinskas, Conn 20 yrs, then Tenn 3, NJ 33, now FL 9.
> The FREE English-based phonetic converters, URL and text , are at
> truespel.com
>
>
>  >
> > ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> > Sender: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> > Poster: Charles C Doyle <cdoyle at UGA.EDU>
> > Subject: Re: nekkid
> >
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> > And the synecdoche "butt naked" parallels the Middle English idiom "belly
> naked"--obsolete, as far as I am aware.
> >
> > --Charlie
> >
> > ________________________________________
> > From: American Dialect Society [ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] on behalf of
> Charles C Doyle [cdoyle at UGA.EDU]
> > Sent: Sunday, March 13, 2011 10:58 AM
> >
> >
> > I've always sort of liked "butt naked"! It's so vivid, picturesque . . .
> .
> >
> > --Charlie
> >
> > ________________________________________
> > From: American Dialect Society [ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] on behalf of
> Wilson Gray [hwgray at GMAIL.COM]
> > Sent: Saturday, March 12, 2011 6:17 PM
> > Well, that's all right, I reckon. Now, if there were only a way to
> > delete from the AmE-speaking language-organ the abominable reanalysis,
> > _butt-_nekkid!;-)
> > --
> > -Wilson
> >
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