origin of dese dem dose in NYCE

[George Thompson]

Does "wid" for "with" count?

     [jokers on the Fulton Ferry begin a clamor of shouts typical of the
old fire department:]  Another yelled “Jump her, boys! Jump her!”  Another,
“Bust her! Let her go!  Yer goin asleep.”  “Turn on the water!’  Turn it
off!”  “Lend us your bouquet-holder!  Give us a blast!  Hit him wid a
spanner!”
     NY Commercial Advertiser, January 29, 1881, p. 3, col. 4
(from my notes; I will look for earlier specimens there)

Found by searching Proquest's 19th C periodicals and its file of NYTimes &
NYTribune, for "dese" together with "bowery"

[a little girl at a German's butcher's stall, with her dog]
Vot you vants, Eh?  ***  Shoost a little liver?  Vell--  ***  And dere's a
pone for de leetle tog.
SATURDAY NIGHT IN THE BOWERY.

*Christian Union (1870-1893); *Mar 29, 1871; 3, 13; American Periodicals

pg. 206


[the Rev. Charles E. Berger speaks, "in a loud, gutteral tone of voice" and
a strong German accent}
Dese honorable peebles vat vas in dis auditorium must know dat the [sic]
church is only a deater; vhy, Henrich Vard Peecher preeches in a deater. .
. .

AN ORIGINAL AFTERPIECE: LIKE ATTRACTS LIKE IN A BOWERY MUSEUM

*New York Times (1857-1922); *Nov 17, 1885; p. 2

I didn't pursue this tactic fully.  The earliest "dese" seem to be from
representations of German accents.  A lot of the results before I added
"bowery" were from representations of southern black speech.  Many probable
false matches, of course.

GAT


On Sun, Feb 12, 2012 at 12:38 PM, Jonathan Lighter
<wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com>wrote:

> My theory:
>
> If the Dutch SWAG goes back far enough (i.e., before the 1930s), the
> Germans were overlooked for the following reasons:
>
> 1. A Dutch influence would be far from obvious, therefore especially
> exotic, interesting, and romantic, and requiring the most ingenuity to
> think of and appreciate.
>
> 2. It was pleasant to believe that the features in question were
> wonderful, albeit annoying, holdovers from the nearly forgotten days
> of Peter Minuit.
>
> 3. To believe otherwise would be to admit that recent immigrants might
> be responsible and would thus be subverting the noble English tongue.
>
> 4. Hmmm. German immigrants..... Well, they were higher on the ethnic
> applause-o-meter than the Irish, Jews, Italians, Poles, Russians,
> Hungarians, Greeks, Chinese, Syrians, etc.   But if German and
> Austrian immigrants (who obviously didn't have the Darwinian mojo to
> make it in Central Europe) might be responsible, so might romantic,
> ambitious, pioneering, sharp-trading Dutch settlers in their steepled,
> pilgrim-style hats.
>
> 5. So it was the Dutch.
>
> JL
>
> On Sun, Feb 12, 2012 at 11:12 AM, Dan Goncharoff <thegonch at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> > Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> > Poster:       Dan Goncharoff <thegonch at GMAIL.COM>
> > Subject:      Re: origin of dese dem dose in NYCE
> >
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> > As a matter of history, New Amsterdam was the only large Dutch
> > settlement in North America. They had smaller villages on the
> > Connecticut, Hudson and Delaware rivers: the Puritans threw them out
> > off the Connecticut, the Swedes replaced them on the Delaware, only
> > the Hudson River contingent remained after the British takeover.
> > DanG
> >
> >
> >
> > On Sun, Feb 12, 2012 at 10:52 AM, Ronald Butters <ronbutters at aol.com>
> wrote:
> >> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> >> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> >> Poster:       Ronald Butters <ronbutters at AOL.COM>
> >> Subject:      Re: origin of dese dem dose in NYCE
> >>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >>
> >> Isn't it the case that this phenomenon is by no means confined to New =
> >> York? Did the Dutch settle Boston  and New Orleans too? And the =
> >> situation is compounded by the fact that in syllable-final position,
> one =
> >> also hears [f].
> >>
> >>
> >> On Feb 11, 2012, at 8:02 PM, Dan Goncharoff wrote:
> >>
> >>> I am very confused. I was under the impression that the use of
> >>> articles starting with a d instead of th started in NYC about 350
> >>> years ago, when the town was called New Amsterdam. The Dutch never
> >>> left, and I suspect their influence on the NY accent didn't, either.
> >>>=20
> >>> DanG
> >>
> >> ------------------------------------------------------------
> >> 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
>



-- 
George A. Thompson
Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern
Univ. Pr., 1998, but nothing much since then.

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