[78-L] Pronunciations and odd label misspellings

[warren moorman]

In classic female blues, I've always slightly preferred the Appalachian Tenn./Ga. pronunciation of Bessie Smith/Ida Cox/Ma Rainey/Leola Manning/etc. (admittedly with individual differences) to the Mississippi and Texas inflections of Wallace/Spivey/Mack/Tucker/etc.

Va. is a good case study, being the middle transit point for so much later dissemination, yet retaining regional differences to this day. The Scottish "oat and aboat" continues across the southside of Va., where "fahtha was a fahma who built his hoose and made a holm".

Notice that in New York, law is pronounced "Lar", as in "Lar school", although Ed Sullivan's "rilly big shew" seems to have been his own. And listen to BBC World, supposedly an arbiter of standard UK pronunciation, and hear them consistently say "BBC Wuld".

I guess these differences matter less as global enclosure proceeds apace; as often heard from the working class around Don Chichester's adopted home of Roanoke, Va.:
"ole whale"....

Warren

--- On Thu, 1/8/09, Jim Whipkey <suuford at msn.com> wrote:

> From: Jim Whipkey <suuford at msn.com>
> Subject: [78-L] Pronunciations and odd label misspellings
> To: 78-l at klickitat.78online.com
> Date: Thursday, January 8, 2009, 7:27 AM
> My apologies if this thread has  been long  discussed and 
> dismissed. I'm
> several days behind on reading my digests. However, 
> Gregg's remarks about
> re-learning  the Virginia way re-kindled my memories of 
> re-learning
> English   in the tidewater fashion when I  moved to the
> Norfolk area in the
> late 50s.
> While it takes some  mental discipline, it didn't take
> long to  catch on to
> the local idioms.   Basically,  every   word with  
> "OU" in it, which I
> always had pronounced as  "out"  is  pronounced  
> by  local tidewater folks
> as   "Oat", I.e.  they go oat and aboat the
> hoase. We had neighbors  who
> were from the outerbanks islands,  Hatteras, Portsmouth,
> Ocracoke in NC
> and  at the time there were no  bridges  to these islands
> and their
> language  had   endured,  pretty much like the original
> Elizabethan English,
> have been told   the   building of  the bridge to Hatteras
> as well as   the
> homogozenation of our language with   sattelite  TV, etc,
> not to mention
> travel and inter-marriage, has  caused   much of the 
> uniqueness of the
> coastal  language pronunciations to  fade.  I see similar 
> back here in the
> hills of WV where I returned  a few years ago, but  
> thankfully, many of the
> old  phrases and pronunciations  have lingered on.  I'm
> glad to find  folks
> who still "Warsh their  britches in the crick"
> RE:  Tidewater VA     accents and  their   "Oat the
> hoase" preferences,
> recall  the only other place I ever heard similar  
> pronunciations was
> southeast Ontario,  how did that come about?
> Jim Whipkey
> 
> > Subject: [78-L] Pronounciations and Odd Label
> Misspellings: Deep Ellum
> > Blues
> 
> >
> > > What did people get water out of:  tap, spout or
> spigot?
> >
> > I got mine from the faucet.
> >
> > Being a New Englander, I had to re-learn many words
> the Virginia way.
> > Staunton is STAN-ton here.  Buchanan is BUCK-an-on,
> and Buena Vista . . .
> > well, I'm not even sure how to write that out.
> There is also a really
> > interesting Richmond-Tidewater accent, especially
> among the FFVs, that
> > pronounces words like house something like: HOOS.
> >
> 
> >
> > Gregg
> >
> >
> >
> >
> 
> _______________________________________________
> 78-L mailing list
> 78-L at klickitat.78online.com
> http://klickitat.78online.com/mailman/listinfo/78-l