Another
gem from
A.Word.A.Day,
eye dialect was first used by
George Krapp in
The English Language in America (
1925) to refer to non-standard
spellings in which, as Krapp put it, "the
convention violated is one of the eyes, not of the ear." Examples of eye dialect may be misspellings which represent youthful or uneducated speech ("
enuff" for enough, "wuz" for was, "
warez" for wares etc); or may reflect different, especially
colloquial,
pronounciations ("
Strine" for
Australian, "Canajun" for
Canadian, "Murrican" for
American etc). Though not mentioned by my sources, eye dialects may have a
political intent as well - "
womyn" or "wymyn", say, adopted by some
feminists to avoid including the word
man in the word
woman.