Yes, Yeah, Yay!

It has come to my attention (a little plant grew and told me) that sometimes people are corrected for saying 'yeah' instead of 'yes.'
I was really surprised that there would this type of mentality with words of confirmation.
So I decided on behalf of all the people that have been corrected because of this to write a post discussing the origins of 'yes' 'yeah' and 'yay'

gēse - yes, so be it, of course, Desendants: yes
gēa - yes, thus so, Desendants: yea(h), yay.

Yea(h) for a while was used as 'yes' in speech it is now dated and fallen out of use as a formal meaning of 'yes' but both words do come directly form Old English and were synonymns in various contexts.

-Нафаня-

Lest talk calmly about all these Ls

Roughly from 1600-1725 (most likely even predates that) -al /aɫ/ and -ol /ɔɫ/ underwent changes aka "mutations." 

• Before -f & -v,  L /ɫ/ becomes 'silent' (deleted). Words half and calf are now pronounced as -af /af/ and salve and halve are -av /av/. -olv /ɔɫv/ is exempt, so solve retains /ɫ/. -olf /ɔɫf/ is not always exempt, as the traditional pronunciation of golf was /gɔf/.

• Before m becomes /ɑ:/ and /o:/ as in alms, balm, calm, Holmes and palm.

• Before k, a *coronal consonant or word final -al and -ol were diphthongized to /ɔuɫ/ and /ouɫ/ as in all,  bald, colt, false, folk, malt, roll, sold, talk, and Walsh. 

• *Coronals are consonants articulated with the flexible front part of the tongue (s, z, θ, ð (TH), n, t, d to name a few).

• BUT THEN: the combination before -k resulted in a lose of /ɫ/ in most accents. Affecting words like caulk, folk and talk. Words acquired after this change, such as talc, were not affected. Falcon was also historically affected, but in some modern dialects (Most notably American English) it has reacquired the /ɫ/due to spelling.

The re-addition of /ɫ/ into American speech has not stopped with falcon. Words such as calm, (palm, balm etc) also have begun (due to spelling) to be pronounced with L again.

To note, there are still dialects within North American English that do still retain the traditional pronunciation without the L.

Is there are a correlation between this re-addition and the phenomenon of intrusive-l in North American English? More research into this area needs to be done before that answer can be given.

-Нафаня-

Where are all these -ENs coming from???

Past Participles -- (-en)

Old English
Storng verbs:
Tense being changed by quality of the vowel.
stelan - Infinitive (to steal)
ic stele - present 1st sing (I steal)
ic stæl - past 1st sing (I stole)
stelende - present participle (stealing)
(ge)stolen - past participle (stolen)

Weak verbs:
Idicate tense by adding an ending
hælan - infinitive (to heal)
ic hæle - present 1st person sing (i heal)
ic hælde - past 1st person sing (i healed)
hælende - present participle (healing)
hæled - past participle (healed)

Modern English
In my opinion, I think that in various dialects of English (esp in North American English) the people are reanylizing the -en suffix onto verbs that originally had not had it.
Verbs such as buy -->boughten, and bring---> broughten are two I can 100% confirm that people say in certain dialects.
More research and looking into this will have to be done but It will be interesting to see if any other verbs are doing this.

-Нафаня-

P.S. Yes there is a trend in other dialects to remove the participle and replace it with the past tense from. (this trend the more common of the two)
I have ridden/I have rode

Verbs? Past? What?

Sorry for the delay! I have been busy with work and getting graduate school applications put together.

Today's topic: Verbal past tense

Long ago somewhere wet and rainy (the British Isles) lived a language that changed some of its verbs to the past tense by changing the vowel.

Well it turns out that English did just that.

So you have the reminantes of this system 'sing' (present) and 'sang' (past).

Now for some verbs they changed over to add a dental-past i.e. -ed.

As can be seen the English verbal system is now in a transitional phase where verbs that previously changed tense via vowel now some are changing to the -ed form.

Not all the verbs will change so most likely the verb sing will never singed.

A brief list below is a list that normally has vowel change but not for all speakers in all areas.

Bring
Weep
Shine
Take
Sweep
Ride
Write
Ring
Sit
Wind
Come
Bear
Slay

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What did you say?!

From bubbler to drinking fountain and coke to Sodi-pop there are many different words for MANY different things. Each dialect of North American English (NAE) will have words that will be foreign to all the dialects of English including the subset of NAE. 

Here I am going to just through down words from various NAE dialects. Hope you enjoy (won't list the meaning).

• Faucet
• Spigot
• teeter-totter
• seesaw
• dandle
• cabinet (not what you are thinking)
• grinder
• johnnycake
• leaf peeper
• rotary
• catty corner
• kitty corner
• stoop
• breezeway
• hoagie
• jimmies
• pavement
• bubbler
• davenport
• euchre
• hot dish
• yooper
• barn-burner
• hoosier
• billfold
• chill bumps
• commode
• fix
• house shoes
• yonder
• poke
• loobery or lubery
• buggy
• anagogglin/sigogglin
• pecker wood
• sparkin'
• roly poly
• crawdad
• tchotchke
• gewgaw

Mamaw and Papaw, Granny and Gramps

Kinship Terms!!! (one of my favorite topics!)

The vast number of Kinship terms that are used to title 'Grandparents' in all of the North American English dialects happens to be quite incredible. Growing up I used specific titles depending on how distant the person was related from me.

• Mamaw/Papaw - Grandmother/grandmother (mothers parents)
• Papaw*/mamaw + first name - Dads parents
• *for my dads father I reduplicated his name so it was 'Joejoe'
• Mamaw + Last name - Great-grand mother mothers side
• Grandma + Last name - Great-grand mother dads side
• Grandma + First name - meant someone that I was not blood related too (in one particular instance)

There are many a different names that children give to their grandparents and with that many names grandparents try to instill in their grandchildren. Some will come from the roots of grandfather/dad/mother/ma . Others will be completely unrelated and just be something interesting the child came up with.

Just a few examples: Nana, Grandma, Granny, Gran, Gram, Grammy, Papa, Grandpa, Granddad, Gramps.

Across languages there are different ways of forming kinship terms, so the crazy process of having many distinct and different words is not limited to the English language!

-Нафаня-

Dryland Fish?

Dryland Fish?

Yesterday happened to be Black Friday and since I here in Minnesota I was unable to go down and visit my Mamaw (grandmother). Though I was able to call and chat with her.

Later that day I received a text message from my sister ... "Mamaw just said that mushrooms were dryland fish.." I asked what she meant and my sister replied "...We are watching a cooking show and the guy was chopping mushrooms and mamaw said "dryland fish." I guess that is what people from Kentucky called them."

I thought before that I knew most of "Appalachian" vocabularies but it seems that I still have a lot to learn. I decided to do some research and figure out if it is usually used as a word for mushrooms or a certain type. I discovered that the mushroom Morchella is called dryland fish colloquially down in that area. There are also other names such as Hickory Chicken etc. Though generally the word applies to one mushroom it seems my Mamaw uses it for most mushrooms!

The Appalachian dialect that my mamaw speaks is full of words and grammars that are unique. It, for me is one of the most interesting dialects in the North American English dialect.

-Нафаня-