origin of dese dem dose in NYCE

[Dan Goncharoff]

Having heard both FInnish and Swedish from native-speaking
girlfriends, I can vouch for them being very different sounding
languages to my untrained ears.
DanG



On Mon, Feb 13, 2012 at 11:55 AM, Ronald Butters <ronbutters at aol.com> wrote:
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> 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
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> 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.
>
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