origin of dese dem dose in NYCE

[Jonathan Lighter]

Since I haven't done a careful analysis, all I can do is offer an
impression, based on what now seem like centuries of examining
vernacular American literature.

My impression and educated guess is that the  "dese, dem, and dose"
phenomenon is not represented in white NYC speech (and in comical
contexts only) until the late 1880s. Within a decade it was a cliche'.

It was specifically associated with the Bowery and a little later the
Lower East Side, just as more recently it has been deemed specially
typical of Brooklyn.  Pressed further, I'd say it was most usually
associated with first- or second-generation Irish, Jewish, and Italian
immigrants.

An early ex.:

1887 _Tid-Bits_ (Jan. 15) 2: A can of benzine exploded in a Bowery
eating house the other day and the proprietor yelled down the kitchen
companion-way - "If yer spill any more of dat coffee I'll massacree
yer!"

Needless to say, the forms "dis," "dat," "dese," "dem," and "dose" had
long been staples of printed representations of AAVE everywhere.

JL

> Subject:      origin of dese dem dose in NYCE
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Ok, people can make all kinds of claims on websites, but I ran into one =
> on NYCE that had me wondering. The claim is that the  fortition of (dh) =
> and (th) (i.e., the pronunciation of dental fricatives as dental stops =
> leading the stereotypical dese, dem, dose, and I suppose tree for 3, =
> etc. is ascribed to originally the Dutch, which of course has no such =
> interdental fricatives. If this were true, it would be just about the =
> only Dutch substrate effect on NYCE outside the lexicon (which anyway is =
> pretty much either gone or spread far more widely, as in stoop and =
> cruller).=20
>
> Now, there are two reasons to imagine that the Dutch probably had =
> nothing to do with it. First there are plenty of other contact languages =
> that don't have dental fricatives. Second, the NYCE stops are dental not =
> alveolar. I understand that Dutch has (unlike say Yiddish and Italian) =
> alveolar not dental /d/ and /t/. Still it's possible, I suppose.=20
>
> Does anyone know of early 19th or even 18th Century mentions of this =
> pronunciation, which is not all that common in North America outside of =
> Irish, French, and Spanish contact dialects?=20
>
>
>
>
>
> Michael Newman
> Associate Professor of Linguistics
> Queens College/CUNY
> michael.newman at qc.cuny.edu
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> 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