Arnold Zwicky's Blog

Clyde Haberman’s NYC column in the NYT on May Day looked at New York City area secession efforts: Staten Island seceding from the city, New York City seceding from the state, Long Island seceding from the state, and more. On the Long Island case, Haberman writes that a

grievance about being Albany’s “stepchild” impels the Suffolk County comptroller, Joseph Sawicki Jr., to call for an independent state of Long Island (which, one can only hope, will not be pronounced Lawn Guyland).

Pity that Long Island can’t be mentioned without an aside taking a dig at the stereotypical pronunciations associated with the island.

Lots of webhits for {“Lawn Guyland”}, including sites offering t-shirts, bumper stickers, and other paraphernalia with LAWN GUYLAND printed on them. Orders of magnitude more than items imprinted KLUMBUS, AHIA.

This entry was posted on May 2, 2009 at 6:11 pm and is filed under Phonology, Variation. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.