[Ads-l] "me" = "my" in NYC

[Paul A Johnston]

Sounds like first-generation irish-American to me--plus stereotyping, as what you've quoted would all be fine in Ireland.  Thst would account for it becoming less popular later in the 20th century, too.  I never heard it, and I lived  with a second-generation Manhattan-born grandmother, born in 1879.  But her parents?
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In the movie _Flying Wild_ (1941), inimitable New Yorker Leo Gorcey
(1917-1969) says, "I'll give ya the back o' me hand!"

This pronunciation "my" is stereotypically British and Irish, and I don't
think I ever heard it "live."

However, it's prominent in circa 1900 accounts of lower-class life in the
city.  E.g.,

1895 Edward W. Townsend _"Chimmie Fadden" Major Max and Other Stories_
(N.Y.: Lovell) 166: We chases down town and meets me friend de barkeep.

JL


--
"If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."

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