Old-timers talking at the cafe: “Hey, you see that hahrah film? That byoo-di-ful pungkin really went through the warsher.” Ah, a lovely dialect slowly disappearing into obscurity. I had a neighbor many years ago who was a salty old dog and he talked the old-timey way. I wish I had been a word collector back then, I would’ve recorded him. But he’s been gone some time now, so I rely on noir movies for my old-timey word supply now. Half the fun of those movies is in the language.
“Let’s get outta here, this joint’s sow-ah.”
There’s great old-timey talk in Kiss of Death, 1947, with Richard Widmark playing the psychopathic Tommy Udo.
My word collection so far:
Hah-rah for horror
Warsh for wash
Byoo-di-ful for beautiful
Pung-kin for pumpkin
Waur-der for water
Muss-cull for muscle
It-lee for Italy
Pur-dee for pretty
Dung-kee for donkey
Sow-ah for sour
Yu-man for human
Sam-wich for sandwich
Lie-berry for library
to be continued
Wilmer Cook (Elisha Cook Jr.): “Keep on riding me and they’re going to be picking iron out of your liver.”
Sam Spade (Humphrey Bogart): “The cheaper the crook, the gaudier the patter.”
From the Maltese Falcon
Empress Norma
empressnorma.com 
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