Eddystone Light Fwd: Re: buoy [boy] ~ [BOO-ee]

[Alice Faber]

On 4/1/14 12:57 AM, Laurence Horn wrote:
> On Apr 1, 2014, at 12:20 AM, Alice Faber wrote:
>
>> On 3/31/14 9:07 PM, Laurence Horn wrote:
>>> On Mar 31, 2014, at 6:50 PM, Wilson Gray wrote:
>>>
>>>> On Mon, Mar 31, 2014 at 3:09 PM, Dan Goodman <dsgood at iphouse.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> The OED says that the standard British pronunciation is now "boy",
>>>>> but used to be  "bwoi" (N.B. not "booey" -- the glide is at the beginning).
>>>>> It does add, tho, that "some orthoepists" give the "booey" version.  The
>>>>> AHD, OTOH, gives "booey" first & "boy" second.
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> I'd like to have been able to hear someone say "bwoy," in the wild!
>>>>
>>>> My wife remembers Lifebuoy soap from her childhood, too. Nevertheless, she
>>>> prefers "boo-ee," anymore.
>>>>
>>>> [Just kidding, though I get the impression, from posts to Facebook, that
>>>> positive "anymore" is spreading all over the country. I've heard it used by
>>>> Seth MacFarlane, a Connecticut yankee.]
>>>>
>>> Interesting.  I've noted a lot of cases in which a New Englander or New Yorker is a positive "anymore"r, but in which on closer inspection (often involving Wikipedia) it turns out s/he (usually he) went to college in the Midwest or lived in Pennsylvania, etc.  As you say, MacFarlane is from CT and went to school in Kent, CT and later RISD (Rhode Island School of Design in Providence), before heading right out to Hollywood, so I'd expect  to hear perhaps a "so don't I" from him, but not a positive "anymore".
>>>
>>
>> Isn't there a positive anymore zone in the Hudson Valley, including the
>> area abutting Connecticut?
>>
> Hmmm.  I thought there was such a zone in upstate NY, but *really* upstate, i.e. around Rochester/Syracuse, not Hudson Valley. (Although I confess I never came across such speakers during my four years in Rochester in the early-mid 1960s.) Is the Hudson Valley pos. anymore zone described somewhere?  It doesn't appear in the DARE data.  I suppose such a zone wouldn't be too far from Kent, in the NW corner of CT, as you're suggesting; I just hadn't been aware it existed.
>

I just have anecdotal evidence, as my parents lived for 30 years in
Columbia County (due west of the Massachusetts/CT state line). When I
was telling my mother about dialectology, and that dialect differences
were found in syntax as well as pronunciation and morphology
(dived/dove), I used positive anymore as an example, and she immediately
recognized it as something some of her neighbors (life-long residents of
the area) used.

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