dese, dem and dose

[Dan Goncharoff]

Ralph Kramden didn't say 'the' though.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UbCv6b96OK0

Alice clearly did, however.

DanG



On Mon, Feb 13, 2012 at 9:23 AM,  <ronbutters at aol.com> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       ronbutters at AOL.COM
> Subject:      Re: dese, dem and dose
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Nussbaum is simply wrong. See, e.g, Paul Johnston's posts from Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. The widespread use of affricates and even dental stops (and also labial stops) in place of the dental fricatives is well known in the sociolinguistic scholarship to be widespread in the US in both rural and urban US in both white and black populations. The idea that it started in any particular substratum and locale (e.g., Dutch settlers in what is now New York City) is absurd. As Johnston also notes, what Nussbaum calls "trouble with the th" would have been brought to the Americas by some English (and Irish) settlers. There is little doubt in my mind that language contact also caused such phonological interference and was widespread in the Americas, with one especially powerful force being African languages of slaves. But it is also clear that variable partial merger of "th" with other phonemes is a natural phenomenon in English, as is evident from child language acquisition probl!
 em!
>  s.
>
> Of course, if what Nussbaum means by "trouble" is 'stereotyping', then it is certainly true that New York in general and Brooklyn in particular has been stereotyped as a "dese" locale. But so also has been slave English, Caribbean English, and the speech of rural white southerners. And it is a variable phenomenon. Even Jackie Gleason's bus-driver character didn't say "pow, right in de kisser." I suppose Amos and Andy would have, though (and not because they had been infected with "th trouble" by Dutch guys in the barber shop.
>
> Sent from my iPad
>
> On Feb 12, 2012, at 7:54 PM, Dan Nussbaum <yekkey at AOL.COM> wrote:
>
>> Philadelphia, Baltimore, Cincinnati, Louisville and Saint Louis ... do not have trouble with the th pronunciation.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Dan Nussbaum
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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