New Yorker article and mystery word

[Nadja Adolf]

I'm inclined to agree, because my white Eastern Washington relatives
use a number of these in public:

innit
oozere (zere rhymes with there, only foreshortened.)
dunno
dint

I suspect these may be social class and educational level related; Mom's
family would *never* use these - except in private with members of the
family or very close friends; possibly this dichotomy was a result of
attempting to evade racial constraints by emphasizing one's education.

However, everyone on both sides gets out of the car in a rural driveway and
shouts "Hello the House" before heading up on the porch.

nadja

PS - what are the correct dates for the jargon conference?
The web page says one thing, the email another, and I am
now thoroughly confused and trying to schedule time off....


-----Original Message-----
From: Mike Cleven [mailto:ironmtn at BIGFOOT.COM]
Sent: Monday, June 21, 1999 9:46 PM
To: CHINOOK at LINGUIST.LDC.UPENN.EDU
Subject: Re: New Yorker article and mystery word


At 02:40 PM 6/21/99 -0700, Jeffrey Kopp wrote:

>This is kind of a weird story; it includes a homosexual encounter
>with a hitchhiking Lummi prizefighter (this is the New Yorker, after
>all).   But what prompts me to write is to ask about the word which
>punctuates his conversations with other natives, apparently the
>Eastern Washington native version of "Eh?", as in:
>
>"'Geez,' the fighter said.  'Close one, enit?'"


Occurs int the BC Interior, too; I think it's just "Old West-ern English"
as adapted through native/cowboy dialect.  I've heard it in Lillooet and
Williams Lake.  Another similar curiosity is the response "ooizit?" for "is
that so", or "did you really" and several other meanings, which is widely
found in rural (especially native) south central BC.