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From: lilandbr@scn.org (Leland Bryant Ross)
Subject: Bird(ie) vowels et al.
Message-ID: <DvFs2A.34z@scn.org>
Sender: news@scn.org
Reply-To: lilandbr@scn.org (Leland Bryant Ross)
Organization: Seattle Community Network
Date: Thu, 1 Aug 1996 01:56:34 GMT
Lines: 36


The first poem I ever learned (2 y. ? mos.) went (trying to reflect the 
pronunciation in the spelling without resorting to IPA) approximately

Birdie wiff a la-la bill,
Hopsy popsy windowsill,
Cocks is little eye 'n says
"Eight chew shame jew sleepyhead?"

Three observations:

1) When I listen to myself recite this I realize that "birdie" has a 
slightly different (mainly more fronted) vowel than "bird", and the 
rhotacism sounds more like an off-glide that a vowel-wide coloring.  I'm 
not sure whether to attribute this to a shift in my vowels since I was a 
tot, or to Ural-Altaic-like assemilation (or the mirror-image of) to the 
suffix -ie, or to contamination from my Esperanto idiolect (Eng "bird" 
*sounds* to me more like Esp "burdo" [bumblebee] than like "birdo" 
[bird]), or what.

2) I am reminded that "ain't" wasn't normally present in the dialect I 
was raised in.  As a result, in my rote memorization of the "poem" at age 
two, I don't think I knew what the last line meant, and I *know* that I 
memorized it without any nasal component.  I don't think I learned to 
really *use* "ain't" until I read Huck Finn several years later.

3) la-la was my babytalk for "yellow" and survived in jocular use in my 
family for years after I had outgrown it.  I have a cousin whose word for 
"yellow" at about the same age was "reggen" /'rEg n/.  Where on earth did 
she come up with THAT?!

--
Liland Brajant ROS'        "Armeo sen kulturo estas malsagxa armeo, kaj
P O Box 30091              malsagxa armeo ne povas venki la malamikon."
Seattle, WA 98103 Usono    --"La Unuecfronto en Kultura Laboro" (30 okt
Tel. (206) 633-2434        1944), _Elektitaj Verkoj de Maux Zedong_ v 3
