Date: Mon, 1 Jan 1996 23:40:58 -0600

From: Dan Goodman dsg[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]MAROON.TC.UMN.EDU

Subject: newcomer's warsh



Date: Tue, 2 Jan 1996 11:45:51 +0800

From: Russ McClay mcclay[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]PROQC.COM.TW

Subject: New Joiner Here



Just a note letting everyone know a new list member has appeared: me.



Discovered ADS-L in an article in our China News, New Years Eve.

They printed the society's list of new words, and via the Internet

I found your site and archives.



After reading through most of logs for 94/95 I decided to subscribe.

I've long been interested in slang and how English changes with the

times. My interest increased when I came Taiwan where I taught

English for the first couple of years of my now going-on-over-

8-year stay.



I'm 40+, born and raised in Southern California. Folks are from

Indiana. I attended college, but 11 years on the road as a

trucker decidedly influenced how I speak today (I somewhat

unfortunately use f***in' in front of a lot of words, which is

something I need to work on with my 2 1/2 year old daughter

around! She's growing up bilingual incidentally. My wife is

Chinese).



My intention is to lurk. But before I get into that mode, thought

I'd throw a few things out there:



A word I've nearly always mispronounced (probably not the right term)

is wash. I pronounce it: warsh, the r sound very soft. (Sorry not

familiar with the codes. And wouldn't know how to use them if I were.)



Toilet: used to get a bit of the r in that too in younger days, but

it's nearly gone now. Besides, I use "head" these days; must be from

my boatbuilding days.



Another is celestial. For some reason I've always slipped an r in

after the t. Though I've nearly cured that one.



Being a newcomer and not a linguist I would imagine some of these have been

discussed before and represent known patterns. But I would like to hear

any comments.



Finally, living overseas makes keeping up on all the current expressions

difficult



The intrusive r (I think that's the correct term -- I'm an amateur

myself) probably comes either from where you grew up or from where your

parents grew up. My _guess_ would be that it's from Indiana (it's

stereotypically Indianan).



Keeping up with current expressions can be difficult even living in the

US. I'm in Minneapolis, and a lot of the new terms start either in the

East or the West.



If you're not careful, you might find yourself distributing

questionnaires for one of the professional linguists....



Dan Goodman dsg[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]maroon.tc.umn.edu