Does Romney drop his G’s in the South?

I’m a bit of a G-dropper. I have a habit of dropping my participial g’s sometimes. If I say “doing” and “working”, it can come out as “doin'” and “workin'”. (Although really, there’s no /g/ there in the first place. It’s alveolarisation of the velar /ŋ/. But I’m going to call it G-dropping anyway.)

This is a pretty common pattern that shows up in many dialects of English, be they British, Australia, or USAian. For me, it seems to get more pronounced the closer I am to the USA.

Nowadays, G-dropping is tied to lower socioeconomic status (but it used to be a high-prestige feature), or to certain regions. Which is why it interested me to see this little story:

Mitt Romney wishes Mobile ‘good mornin”

Although he didn’t mention grits or his growing like of the word “y’all,” Romney’s awkward bid to connect to Southern voters was still evident. He wished the crowd a “fine Alabama good mornin’’” — dropping the letter “g” at the end of some words.

So is Romney doing some linguistic pandering with the locals? I thought I’d check by watching stump speeches — one in the North, one in the South — and compare the number of dropped g’s.

This meant watching videos of Romney on the stump, which is not entirely without risk.

When my boys have asked about Romney, I’ve said that although I don’t want him to be president of the USA, he’s not one of the crazy ones, and that there were loads of people in the race who were more stupid (Santorum, Perry, Bachmann, Cain) or evil (Gingrich, um… Cain) than Romney. But the weird thing about Romney is that he is capable of saying stupid, evil things while seeming perfectly sensible. Call it his gift.

So I’ve watched a bit of Romney doing the usual Republican schtick: bashing Europe, vowing to repeal health care, hammering away at unions, and claiming that the free market will fix everything. While watching these speeches, I was left with one over-arching impression: If you want to know what Romney’s stump speeches are like, just picture a giant penis in a suit, saying “I believe in freedom!” I’m sorry for that mental image, but tell me if you don’t find it accurate.

To the counts.

New Hampshire

Alabama

Well, just from these two speeches, it seems like Romney doesn’t do a lot of G-dropping in either place. I have no doubt that he tried it out in Mobile, but it doesn’t seem to be a feature he uses often, no matter where.

I realise this is a small sample. I tried to watch more, but there’s only so much moral vacuity that one can stand.