Date:  Tue, 5 Dec 1995 07:39:16 -0500

From:  "Dennis R. Preston" <preston[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]PILOT.MSU.EDU>

Subject: Re: On Wisconsin!



Aw shucks Larry. You think you had it tough. Imagine me arriving late at

night in Medicine, Wi - SKAHN - sin from Loovuhl, KY some time about 1963.

I went into a small market, half asleep, and picked up only a few things.

At the checkout counter, a clerk asked if I wanted these few things in a

'bIuhg.' What the hell could she be talking ab out? My fist contact with

the Northern Cities Shift (no 'Great' in its title, by the way). I was

double-confused, in fact, since, even after retrieving the lexical item

'bag,' I was aware that I was more used to 'sack' (of course) for

grocieries and used 'bag' much more frequently for a testicles-container.

Can we have some more stories of phonological cross-dialectal

misunderstanding? I love 'em.

Dennis

<preston[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]pilot.msu.edu>



>>FWIW, My wife's name is Holly and she complains that Minnesotans call her

>>[haeli]. A bit of an exageration, but not too far off. This fronted,

>>nasalised pronunciation seems to be age graded (with younger people

>>seeming to have the more fronted/nasalised version) and, I believe,

>>urban, altho I have not made enough tapes (I did a small study of this

>>feature in the summer of '94) of ruralites to make any conclusive

>>statement.

>

>Ah yes, the Great Northern Vowel Shift. I've heard Bill Labov talk about it

>for years, but my most memorable encounter was still my first, back in the

>early 1960's in my undergraduate days at the University of

>RIAAAENNN-ch'ster (that's supposed to be a highish front very nasalized

>vowel)--the university/city east of Buffalo, where I spent one puzzling but

>ultimately enlightening hour on a blind date with a young woman from the area

>who seemed to be talking about salads and couldn't figure out what \I/ was

>saying, since she meant SALads, you know, as opposed to liquids...

>

>--Larry