eye dialect was RE: nekkid

[Laurence Horn]

At 7:02 AM -0700 3/15/11, James A. Landau <JJJRLandau at netscape.com> wrote:
>The sports section of the Philadelphia Inquirer is fond of referring
>to the Philadelphia Eagles football team as the "Iggles".  This is
>not done to sneer at the literacy of local football fans but rather
>to give a feeling of "yes, we're local" to the readers.
>
>If you ever see in print male ejaculate referred to as "kum", you
>can be sure you are reading a low-brow girlie magazine.
>
>Perhaps not really eye dialect, but advertisers sometimes
>deliberately use phonetic spellings as eye-catchers, e.g. "Ken-l
>Ration".  "LUV" was used by at least two different firms, one for a
>brand of disposable diapers and one for an infant's car seat.
>
>Occasionally such a deliberate misspelling will catch on.
>Specifically "lite" was originally used (to the best of my
>recollection) as a come-on for somebody's sugar-free soft drink but
>has caught on to mean any diet drink, or more generally a diet food,
>and even by extension something with less than the normal
>caloric/intellectual/whatever load, e.g. sneering at someone's
>publication as "American Speech lite".
>
>    - James A. Landau
>
>PS:  I received a "Nigerian" e-mail (actually it was from Russia)
>soliciting me for a "mutual preposition".
>
Probably "cum" again.

LH

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