Facebook: "a _longly_ boy"

[Wilson Gray]

I haven't seen this in print, before, but I've both heard it and even
spoken it, back in radio days, when, of a longly evening, I'd listen to an
episode of "The Long Ranger," once parodied as "The Loan Arranger" by
somebody-nutha.

I've mentioned assuming that "Anacin" was "Anderson," because of dialect
clash. Does anyone else recall "Ironized Yeast Tablets"? No? I'm not
surprised. They were, in fact, "_Ionized_ Yeast Tablets." "Bell Aspirin" is
still around as "_Bayer_ Aspirin." The problem for me was an initial
inability to distinguish "Bell" > "Bay-ul" from "Bayer" > "Bay-uh," given
the "knowledge" that there was no such word as "Bay-uh" < "non-existent"
_Bayer_.

Naturally, no one is surprised by the fact that linking-l and intrusive-l -
I used to pronounce, e.g. "Motrin" as "Mole-trin," until I was corrected -
are also common in ahruh-liss dialects.

In my personal experience, whether a given speaker uses /r/ or /l/ or /?/
is pretty random. My mother used "Bay-uh ?-aspirin" as opposed to my
"Bay-uh l-aspirin." She used "j[^r]dge," but I used "j[E]dge," both from <
"j[^I]dge." We both used "m[^I]ch," but some of my friends used "m[^r]ch."

Youneverknow.

--
-Wilson
-----
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"---a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-Mark Twain

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