eye dialect was RE: nekkid

Mon Mar 14 13:15:52 UTC 2011

Wikipedia is correct though idiotically expressed.

"Eye dialect" means nonstandard spelling that's intended to show that a
character is ignorant and illiterate, regardless of the phonetic accuracy of
the spelling itself.

A prime example of eye dialect in the USA would be "uv" for "of."  Few
Americans make that distinction.  OTOH, in Irish dialogue written for
Americans, "uv" is a reasonable, if distracting, approximation; in other
words, not eye dialect.

For some, "nekkid" is pointless eye dialect for "naked" - pointless because
that's how almost everybody across a vast region says it.  To me, it isn't
eye-dialect because it represents a nonstandard pronunciation.

Now, if somebody suddenly realized just how ignorant and illiterate *I* am,
and, to prove it, represented me as saying "nekkid" instead of /nEikId/ that
would be eye dialect, regardless of what it would be for Wilson and Charlie.

(Actually they'd nail it for eye dialect because they know that, back where
I come from, /nEikId/ is normal; also, I've already told them I say
/nEikId/.)

JL

On Mon, Mar 14, 2011 at 8:22 AM, Tom Zurinskas <truespel at hotmail.com> wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Tom Zurinskas <truespel at HOTMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: eye dialect was RE: nekkid
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> from wikipedia
>
> "Eye dialect is the use of non-standard spelling for speech to draw
> attention to pronunciation, often in regard to the literary technique of
> using non-standard spelling to approximate a pronunciation that is actually
> no different from the standard pronunciation but has the effect of
> dialectal, foreign, or uneducated speech."
>
> This makes no sense.  How could using a special spelling "no different from
> standard pronunciation" make it "dialectal, foreign or uneducated" Unless
> the standard is that way?  But that would make it a nonstandard standard.
>
> My take is that "eye dialect" as defined is merely a form of tradspel
> phonetics.  It's a writing system.  So this form of phonetics could be
> called tradnetics, so to speak.  The problem here is that not all English
> sounds have consistent tradspel forms, so they can never be spelled in "eye
> dialect".  Basically truespel phonetics steps in here to standardize eye
> dialect using a phonetics based on English tradspel.
>
>
> 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
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> ----------------------------------------
> > Date: Sun, 13 Mar 2011 17:34:26 -0500
> > From: GordonMJ at MISSOURI.EDU
> > Subject: Re: eye dialect was RE: nekkid
> > To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> >
> > ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> > Sender: American Dialect Society
> > Poster: "Gordon, Matthew J."
> > 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
> > > Poster: Charles C Doyle
>  > > 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
> > >
> > > ------------------------------------------------------------
> > > The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
> > >
> > > ------------------------------------------------------------
> > > The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------
> > The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------
> > The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------
> > The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------
> > The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>

--
"If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."

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