jp1
3-31-12, 10:47pm
I've always enjoyed his books: Currently I'm reading Made In America: An Informal History of the English Language in the United States.
At the end of a paragraph talking about how writings from the "indifferently educated" during the colonial period provide insight into likely pronunciations, with numerous examples (pizen for poison, darter for daughter, varmint for vermin, jest for just, etc), he ends with the following sentence: All of this suggests that if we wished to find a modern-day model for British and American speech of the late eighteenth century, we could probably do no better than Yosemite Sam. ;)
At the end of a paragraph talking about how writings from the "indifferently educated" during the colonial period provide insight into likely pronunciations, with numerous examples (pizen for poison, darter for daughter, varmint for vermin, jest for just, etc), he ends with the following sentence: All of this suggests that if we wished to find a modern-day model for British and American speech of the late eighteenth century, we could probably do no better than Yosemite Sam. ;)