End of ADS-L Digest - 18 Nov 1997 to 19 Nov 1997
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Subject: ADS-L Digest - 19 Nov 1997 to 20 Nov 1997

There are 13 messages totalling 585 lines in this issue.

Topics of the day:

 1. "Merzouri"
 2. More from the American Turf Register and Sporting Magazine
 3. <No subject given>
 4. vernacular (7)
 5. Rickford on Ebonics in Discovery (3)

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Date:  Wed, 19 Nov 1997 23:12:12 -0600
From:  "Donald M. Lance" <engdl[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]SHOWME.MISSOURI.EDU>
Subject: Re: "Merzouri"

>Just what does 'er' spell?
>>>>>
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."
<<<<<<<

> Mark A. Mandel :

>Are you proposing that this SC dialect had an r-less schwa in
>"turnips"? Is that plausible?

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

There would have been several dialects in the Columbia SC area at that
time. Yes, I am proposing (even claiming) that evidence in the spelling
indicates that the "Cracker" had r-less speech. He said 'you' and 'your'
the same way and the conventional eye-dialect spelling (at that time) of
the vowel sound in these words, as well as in 'pertaters' and 'ternups',
was -er-. No American would choose this spelling now, but over a century
ago this spelling seems to have worked for the "litterati" who were writing
these spoofs; it crops up in other stories in this genre. My Uncle Ed, who
grew up in northern Florida and called himself a Cracker, had r-less
speech, though he was much brighter than the hapless fellow in the story.
Uncle Ed said 'you' and 'your' alike -- just like the -er- vowel nuclei in
the other words. Spellings and verbal jibes in these stories written in
the mid-19th century indicated that the "educated" people, often but not
always outsiders, made fun of the dialects of bumpkins, which is part of
the "humor" of this story.