Date: Wed, 19 Nov 1997 14:33:46 -0500

From: Mark Mandel Mark[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]DRAGONSYS.COM

Subject: "Merzouri"



"Donald M. Lance" engdl[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]SHOWME.MISSOURI.EDU writes:





Just what does 'er' spell?

[...]

The story ends with the Cracker telling another potential

customer, threatening him with a well worn knife, "Pertaters end

ternups, Mabin--but don't yer say aiggs, Mabin! Ef yer do, I'll

sample yer gizzard!"



The puzzle. Not too hard. This was South Carolina, where r-

lessness and r-fulness overlapped, If the spelling is accurate,

the fellow had the same vowel in the first and last syllables of

'potatoes' and the first syllable of 'turnips' as well as in 'you'

and 'your'. So, what was it? Not what present-day literal-minded

Americans assume, but a schwa-like sound that the British

represent with 'er' and some 19th-century American writers also

represented with 'er'. The words that provide the clinching

evidence are the two instances of 'you', which I really doubt were

pronounced as "spelled."







Are you proposing that this SC dialect had an r-less schwa in

"turnips"? Is that plausible?



Mark A. Mandel : Senior Linguist : mark[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]dragonsys.com

Dragon Systems, Inc. : speech recognition : +1 617 965-5200

320 Nevada St., Newton, MA 02160, USA : http://www.dragonsys.com/

Personal home page: http://world.std.com/~mam/