LINGUIST List 3.61

Wed 22 Jan 1992

Disc: Clusters

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1. I'm not short, merely vertically challenSDFNCRritvax.isc.rit.edu, Fillum, adverb innovations
2. "Don W.", Pronouns; Pronunciation
3. bert peeters, 3.41 Clusters

In parts of the midwest, there can be epenthetic vowels before *or* after
liquids, as in athlete ---> athulete and elm ---> ellum.

On another note, have people heard "major" and "big time"? "major" seems
to be pretty straightforward, as in "We're/you're(*I'm) talking major
revisions here." "Big time," which is not in my dialect, is a little
weirder:

He screwed up big time.

It has a sort of pidgin flavor to it, but I'm curious about other uses.
Susan Fischer

Re various in 3-41:

As for "you'uns," the pronoun "we'uns" is attested in at least one
quotation in Bruce Catton's Civil War histories. As a native speaker
of "you-all," I must admit I've never heard "you'uns" or even "we'uns."
Maybe that usage is not in Tidewater dialects. Is it Piedmont or
Appalachian ("hillbilly" :->).

Interestingly, perhaps, the form "we-all" does not exist. No reason
it should, I guess.

Being out of the "country" can do things to one's (:->) language:
I once tried to buy some film from a store owner in northeastern
North Carolina. When I asked for "film," he drew a blank. Seeing
his puzzlement, I just showed him my camera. "Oh," he exclaimed,
"you mean fillums!" He pronounced it [fijumz] (j = yod, of course).
I almost congratulated him on his French but thought better of it.
Now I learn it's "Hiberno-English." No surprise, really: that area
was settled heavily by Scotch-Irish.

Don W.
DonWebbCSUS.EDU

> Date: Mon, 13 Jan 92 16:36:26 MET
> From: hartmutruc.dk (Hartmut Haberland)
>
> Has anybody commented on the feature of Hiberno-English (Anlo-Irish) that
> makes people (at least in Dublin) pronounce film like fillum etc.?

The same feature exists in various dialects of Dutch, where the cluster
involved consists of /l/ or /r/ followed by /m/ or /k/.

Compare: zalm -> zallem (salmon)
 kerk -> kerrek (church)
 melk -> mellek (milk)
 arm -> arrem (arm)