[Ads-l] Pertition

[Ben Zimmer]

You'll find lots of similar "r" spellings in 19th-century US sources, like
"proberbly" and "princerple," as I discussed in these old posts:

https://groups.google.com/g/alt.usage.english/c/AlE6bFg5G7I/m/qZXAaV7TJYcJ
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/004985.html

My sense is these spellings could be construed as either non-rhotic (with
"er" representing an eye-dialect version of schwa) or rhotic (with "er"
representing an r-colored schwa), depending on the speaker in question. In
the case of "pertition," I could imagine some influence from "perdition"
encouraging the non-standard spelling.

--bgz

On Fri, Aug 18, 2023 at 3:46 PM Michael Newman <Michael.Newman at qc.cuny.edu>
wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> In looking through the Baltimore municipal archives, we found a found
> spellings like “pertition” for petition from 1839. One interpretation is
> that it is a sign of non-rhoticity in the writer, who then would likely not
> be a Baltimorean. However, I’m wondering if it could be a lexical or
> phonological variant of its own.
>
> Any ideas?
>
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> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>

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