Master for Webs » the poet http://master4webs.com All tools for web masters Sun, 02 Oct 2011 08:08:36 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.1 Word for the Wise : Hoosier English http://master4webs.com/word-for-the-wise-hoosier-english.html http://master4webs.com/word-for-the-wise-hoosier-english.html#comments Sat, 10 Apr 2010 08:06:03 +0000 admin http://master4webs.com/?p=369 On October 5, we mark the 150th birth anniversary of James Whitcomb Riley, the Indiana writer remembered as “the poet of the common people.” Riley first attracted attention in the 1880s for a series of poems written in what has since come to be called “Hoosier English,” the dialect spoken in south-central Indiana.

Two of his most popular poems are “Little Orphan Annie” (that work inspired the comic strip) and “When the Frost is on the Punk in.” Generations of schoolchildren may recall these lines from that poem: O, it sets my heart a-clicking’ like the ticking’ of a clock, /When the frost is on the punk in and the fodder’s in the shock.

Riley’s fellow Indianans also may remember him as the man who offered a highly fanciful theory for how residents of their state came to be known as Hoosiers. According to Riley, the term comes from the territory’s wilderness days, when tavern fights could get pretty tough. He claimed men would “gouge, scratch, and bite off noses and ears of their opponents.” At the end of such a bout, body parts would be strewn about the taverns. Supposedly, helpful folks entering such an establishment after the fracas would discover a stray part lying around, and would point it out and ask those assembled, “Whose ear?”

Needless to say, that tall tale isn’t granted much credibility by language scholars.

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