origin of dese dem dose in NYCE

[Ronald Butters]

Interesting. Can you really hear a difference between Swedish vowels and Finnish? I also wonder how many of the "Finns" actually were Swedish speakers.

The point, of course, is that substrate influences would, as JL notes, come from many different potential sources, reinforced by (or even predominantly the result of) the fact that even the English have "trouble" with "th". Looking for Dutch or Yiddish or Finnish or Italian or Slavic or even African "substrate" is more or less a dead end.

On Feb 13, 2012, at 11:40 AM, Laurence Horn wrote:

> If you listen to the Youpertalk albums, you can tell there's a strong influence from Finnish, in the vowels as well as the absence of dental fricatives.  It may vary for different areas of the U.P., and of course some of the Finnish or Swedish immigrants to the U.P. may have spent time in Canada en route, but I don't know if I'd be capable of detecting a "Canadian substrate", whatever that would amount to.  Also the Youpertalk albums have some songs such in Finnish.  None in Canadian.  I can't detect any Irish influences in the speech patterns, as opposed to, say, speech patterns in early 20th c. New York or Boston English.  I admit, this is pretty impressionistic stuff.

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