Grammar Girl's "needs done" survey

[Joel S. Berson]

At 9/7/2011 01:16 PM, Wilson Gray wrote:

>On Wed, Sep 7, 2011 at 12:11 PM, Ben Zimmer
><bgzimmer at babel.ling.upenn.edu> wrote:
> > with folksy dropped g
>
>You mean "with the standard dropped g of Black English, Southern
>English, Southwestern English, Western English, etc.," of course.
>
>When you make a point of describing Obama's speech as "folksy," here,
>you make it appear that you think that his use of "dropped g" is
>unnatural or artificial, that he's merely faking it in order to appear
>down with the common people or some such thing.
>
>OTOH, if you had written "with gutless dropped g," implying an effort
>on Obama's part not to appear to be too erudite, hence too uppity or
>too biggity, lest he annoy any Republicans who may have condescended
>to concern themselves with what he had to say, well, naturally, I'd
>gladly cosign that.

How did he pronounce " rebuildin' " when he was at Harvard?

Joel

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