Can anyone explain to me how an eye dialect of the word cross can be crost? Where does the 't' at the end come from in the pronounciation of the word? I have seen this mentioned here.
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I don't know the answer to your question but thank you very much for making me start my day by learning something new: eye dialect! – PPH Apr 24 '22 at 09:19
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People sometimes put extra, or wrong, consonants into words because they find it easier to say the word that way; for instance, some folk say (and write) hamster,as 'hampster'', and chimney used sometimes to be mispronounced as 'chimbley'. – Kate Bunting Apr 24 '22 at 14:30
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Eye dialects are not standard English. They are deliberate mis-spellings of words to attempt to simulate a local dialect, so people who read the word phonetically can hear how a person from a different region might have pronounced it.
So "crost" sound like /krɔs/ but in this dialect it sounds like /krɔst/.
In my region we lengthen the "a" sound. Now I could attempt to put a phonetic pronunciation which would be clear to all; but, many people don't know how the phonetic symbols sound. So instead, I could use an "eye dialect" to spell the work in a way that makes the reader approximate the same phonetic sound.
My cwar drove off the road.
Quickly a reader would notice that "cwar" is not properly spelled word, and would attempt to pronounce them in their mind. Then they might realize that it sounds a bit like "car" (the context of the sentence helps too). With this, they would guess I wrote "My car drove off the road." but in a way that sounded like a person from a particular region where they add "w" sounds to their "a" sound.
Edwin Buck
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There is a region, where most people who pronounce words that end in "ss" as "st". "diss" becomes "dist", 'miss" becomes "mist" etc. That's how "cross" became "crost" – Edwin Buck Apr 24 '22 at 12:13
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This seems to be a nonse use. That is I can find a single example in all of literature!
"This y'ar map," said he, spreading it out under his stubby fingers, "shows the deestrict. I gets it of Fay, so you gains an idee of th' lay of the land a whole lot. Them claims marked with a crost belongs to th' Company. You kin take her and explore."
The speaker is making an error. It seems to me that they are confusing the noun "cross" with the participle "crossed" which would justify the pronunciation.
However with such little evidence, it could just be a single random mistake, or individual peculiarity of speech with no real significance or generalisation.
James K
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