Re: American Dutch dialects

> > > They would have studied in the capital BUT there were no real
> > > doctors where my family lived. You had to go to the capital by
> > > car or train.
> >
> > He either had direct or indirect constact with NYC and
> > spoke some predecessor of General American, or he did
> > neither. You can't have it both ways.
> >
> >
> > Torsten
>
> The problem is that General American English sounds nothing like
> NYC English. I don't think you could persuade anyone except a
> die-hard Yankees fan otherwise.

No, the problem is you think today's NYC English after the massive immigration of the late 19th - early 20th century is identical to that of the early 19th century.

> Any contact with NYC English would have been through print-media
> until the 1930s when radio became available for the masses and
> talkies arrived in the cities.
>

Any *direct* contact, that is. People here traveled just as little as they did in the USA (all passenger trains used to have a separate car for the passengers' luggage; when people did travel it was with a trunk so massive they couldn't handle it themselves) and nonetheless as soon as a hierarchy was established in the new and old towns with academics from the big city at the top a process started which ended with the upper language of the big city becoming dominant.


Torsten