; or, through a kindred change, both - bofe; youth
- youf; but mouth - mout'; earth - eart'; south - sout'; waiting
- vaiten;' was - vas; widow - vidow; woman - voman; work - vork;
one - von; we - ve, &c. And hence, by way of a compound mixture,
we get from him drafel for travel, derriple for terrible, a
daple-leck for a table-leg, bepples for pebbles, tisasder for
disaster, schimnastig dricks for gymnastic tricks, let-bencil for
lead-pencil, &c. The peculiarity of Germans pronouncing in their
mother tongue s like sh when it is followed by a
t or
p, and of Germans in southern Germany often also final
s like
sh, naturally produced in their American
jargon such results as shplit, shtop, shtraight, shtar,
shtupendous, shpree, shpirit, &c; ish(is), ash(as), &c.; and, by
analogy led to shveet(sweet), schwig(swig), &c. We need not
notice, however, more than these freaks of the
German-American-English of the present poems, as little as we
need advert to simple vulgarisms also met with in England, such
as the omission of the final
g in words terminating in
ing (blayin' - playing; shpinnen' - spinning; ridin',
sailin', roonin', &c.
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