Yags: the story thus far

[John Bowden]

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
I was interested in Larry Trask's notes on Lazza as a version of his name.
The process is very productive in Australian English: some of us here have
actually assigned problems based on this naming practice to introductory
linguistics students.

Here's the (as far as I can tell) completely productive rule:

You take a name that has stress on the first syllable and in which the
second syllable starts with /r/.  Chop off everything after the first
syllable and replace it with -zza.  Thus:

Larry -> Lazza
Barry -> Bazza
Marian -> Mazza
Warren -> Wazza
Caroline -> Cazza, etc...

Not sure why so many English names that fulfill the criteria have digraph
/ae/ as the stressed vowel, but there you are.

John

----- Original Message -----
From: Larry Trask <larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk>
To: <HISTLING at VM.SC.EDU>
Sent: Wednesday, January 31, 2001 4:00 AM
Subject: Re: Yags: the story thus far


> ----------------------------Original message----------------------------
> Kevin Tuite writes:
>
> >  Also from Britain is a type of "-a/e+s/z name slang especially
> >  prevalent in the '80s", by which Charles becomes "Chas" and Nigel is
"Nezz"
> >  (mentioned by Jasmin Harvey).
>
> Indeed, though such formations are far from dead.  My name is 'Larry',
> and I am often addressed as 'Laz' or 'Lazza' by my British friends.
> My British wife addresses her best friend, Marian, as 'Maz' or 'Mazza'.
> The British politician Michael Heseltine is commonly referred to as
> 'Hezza' in the satirical magazine Private Eye -- though I doubt that
> his friends call him this.
>
> I think this may be Australian, too, since I've encountered Australian
> 'Bazza' for 'Barry', at least in print.
>
> Of course, my friends and I, like the editors of Private Eye, are not
> young people -- though I doubt most of us would think of ourselves
> as '80s people.  I'm more of a '50s person, I think -- especially
> in my deeply fossilized American English, which is only occasionally
> updated by new Americanisms passed on to me by my wife, who watches
> Frasier and ER.
>
> When I was a kid, absolutely everybody pronounced the /hw/ in words like
> 'white' and 'why', and so I learned to do this too.  Years later, my
> mother noticed that my younger brothers were omitting the /h/ in these
> words, and she condemned this new style as "sloppy".  But now I've
> been joined at Sussex by a younger American colleague, and she tells
> me that she considers the use of /hw/ to be "pretentious".
>
> I think I could cope with a slightly more stately pace of linguistic
> change.
>
>
> Larry Trask
> COGS
> University of Sussex
> Brighton BN1 9QH
> UK
>
> larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk
>
> Tel: 01273-678693 (from UK); +44-1273-678693 (from abroad)
> Fax: 01273-671320 (from UK); +44-1273-671320 (from abroad)
>