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. One that piqued my interest a year or two ago is "dis" / "dissed".



Believe it or not, in addition to many other kinds of music, I like rap.

This is where I first heard it. It seems to mean "put down", and maybe

derives from "dismissed".



And two more: though I am a touch typist (about 60 wpm, 95% accuracy

excluding numbers), I have what I consider the strange habit of not

typing the "r" when I type the word "your". I've noticed this with

others on the net. And lastly, the word "definitely". I see this word

spelled as often definately as I do the correct way.



Russ

--

m c c l a y

...................................................................

                        mcclay[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]proqc.com.tw

                   http://www.proqc.com/~mcclay/