From: Rick McCallister
Message: 63553
Date: 2009-03-02
--- On Mon, 3/2/09, tgpedersen <tgpedersen@...> wrote:
. . .
>
> But you forget one thing: the extreme mobility, albeit
> mostly one way
> and once only, of American society at the time. If she
> struck lucky,
> that school marm would find a husband so important that he
> had
> actually studied on the east coast, or at least at the
> local state
> university, where he would have been taught by professors
> from the
> east coast.
>
> > My maternal grandfather was one of the local gentry,
> and later in
> > life, was a schoolmaster. He spoke a softer more
> standard version
> > of the local WV dialect. He said "tomato"
> instead of "mater", etc.
> > but with the local intonation.
> > Keep in mind that in the 1800s, the r-less Boston
> dialect was
> > probably seen as the prestige dialect, but it
> certainly was not
> > taught by schoolmarms in Appalachia and the Midwest.
>
> Well, you keep in mind that America always had two
> standards: one New
> England / British one for blue-blooded Americans and one
> 'true'
> American one for red-blooded Americans. On that point it
> was similar
> to Norway in the 19th century: you can't use the
> language of those you
> just freed yourself from, so to assert your differentness
> you have to
> pick up habits from the bottom layer, in Norway the
> dialects, in the
> USA, since there was no national legitimacy to be gained
> from local
> dialects, from Low New York, in my opinion, which would
> have had
> retroflex r's and r-colored vowels at the time or
> Brooklynese wouldn't
> have /oI/ today. Place a school marm in the loyalty
> conflict between
> the nationally dubious and mostly breadless New England,
> and the
> blingbling of New York; those are the two sociolects her
> successful
> husband would have mastered, and you know what she will
> choose.
The NY dialect is so different from the Midwest dialect, that most Americans pretty much lump it in with the Boston accent, and other NE r-less dialects --unless they've traveled. I doubt that most non-East Coast Americans could tell them apart.
The Midwest was interesting in that most of the upper class was home spun. There weren't too many easterners who went there. More often, it was the other way around --the Rockefellers and the Bushes came from the Midwest. East Coast money tended to go the Pacific Coast, into mines, etc. or South, into cotton and railroads. In the Midwest, fortunes came through hard work or invention, e.g. Edison and Ford.
>
> > > And since the Sinter Klaas -> Santa Claus
> plays a large role in
> > > the American pantheon (just kidding), the channel
> which brought
> > > that deity from the Dutch would be conducive to
> language
> > > peculiarities too.
> > > Remember that similar religions imply cultural
> influence.
> > >
> > > BTW I read in the archive that according to
> Miguel the retroflex
> > > r occurs in both Leids and Rotterdams.
> >
> > Yes, but they also picked up Chivari, etc. from the
> French and I
> > don't think we picked up our /r/ from them either.
>
> Erh, okay. Who they and what on earth is Chivari?
>
What, they don't have it in Denmark?
It's a custom from the Midwest and the Mississippi Valley where the bride and groom's family stay up all night banging pans and singing. My family, being from WV, didn't have this and it's strictly small town, in any case. It goes by various forms and spellings: Chivari, Sharivaree, etc. You see traces of it when the groom's friends use spray frost to write messages on the car, tie tin cans to the bumper, etc.