Yonduh lies de castle of de caliph, my fadder (attrib Tony Curtis 1961 Nov)

[Jonathan Lighter]

It's like "duh."

JL

On Thu, Oct 20, 2011 at 4:25 PM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: Yonduh lies de castle of de caliph, my fadder (attrib Tony
>              Curtis 1961 Nov)
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On Thu, Oct 20, 2011 at 10:26 AM, Jonathan Lighter
> <wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> "He's *got*" not  "He's git."
>
> But what pronunciation is represented by the eye-phonetic _de_ in the
> representation of Curtis's idiolect? In BE, that spelling - assuming
> that _de_ = [di] - is very close to what I perceive as variation
> between [DI/dI] and [Di/di] and various shadings in between, but with,
> IME, [DI] being the most-usual pronunciation, nowadays.
>
> --
> -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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