“Dese Dem Dose” (Brooklynese or New Yorkese language)

“Dese, dem and dose” for “these, them and those” is often viewed as typical uneducated language of rough people on the street. The language is often called “Brooklynese” or “New Yorkese.” “Dese, dem, dose” dates from the 1880s and 1890s, and is mostly of historical interest today.
 
“The ‘dese, dem and dose’ fraternity” was printed in the Boston (MA) Sunday Globe on August 30, 1891. “The ‘dese,’ ‘dem,’ ‘dat’ and ‘dey’ men” was printed in the Dayton (OH) Daily News on April 6, 1899. “Almost every man of note in Gotham stopped in to say ‘Hello!’ The ‘dese,’ ‘dem,’ ‘dose’ and ‘dat[ variety were entirely absent” was printed in the The News (Lynchburg, VA) on APril 8, 1899.
 
“Thoity Thoid and Thoid” (33rd Street and Third Avenue) is an example of this dialect.
   
 
Wikipedia: Dese Dem Dose
Dese Dem Dose is a 1935 instrumental composed by Glenn Miller and recorded by The Dorsey Brothers orchestra.
 
Newspapers.com
30 August 1891, Boston (MA) Sunday Globe, pg. 20, col. 7:
BILLY CRANE PLAY PUGILIST.
Fierce Battle Which a Tourist to Cohasset Beheld With a Beating Heart.
(...)
Mr. Crane (affecting the vocabulary of the “dese, dem and dose” fraternity)—“So you’d swipe me in d’ ta-roat, would you?”
 
Newspapers.com
6 April 1899, Dayton (OH) Daily News, “Sporting Gossip,” pg. 7, col. 4:
The “dese,” “dem,” “dat” and “dey” men, with corrugated sweaters and fifteen-cent bankrolls, were conspicuously absent in the great mob that thronged the place yesterday.
   
Newspapers.com
8 April 1899, The News (Lynchburg, VA), “Corbett Opens a Saloon,” pg. 7, col. 4:
Almost every man of note in Gotham stopped in to say “Hello!” The “dese,” “dem,” “dose” and “dat” variety were entirely absent.
 
Newspapers.com
18 April 1904, The Daily Globe (Fall River, MA), “Court Chronicles,“pg. 8, col. 2:
Edward Powers and Thomas Burke were featured in a knockout sketch, said to have been writeen by Powers and enttitled “Dese, Dem an’ Dose.”
 
Newspapers.com
25 September 1910, San Francisco (CA) Chronicle, “Bits of Color Round th’ Town” by Waldemar Young, pg. 26, col. 2:
“That is near illiteracy, nothing more. The fellow who says ‘dese, dem and dose’ for ‘these, them and those’ is not speaking slang. he is dropping into the argot of his own strata of society, and most likely eats with his knife. He is what good slang aptly calls a ‘roughneck.’ He has no place among gentlemen, while good slang has.”
 
Newspapers.com
1 March 1914, The Sunday Times (Chattanooga, TN), “Freddie Welch, Angered, Hands Out Stright Talk to Ritchie,” pg. 28, col. 2:
When you meet Welch you don’t expect a fellow with “dese, dem, dose, dat” expressions.
 
Newspapers.
3 July 1915, San Francisco (CA) Examiner, “Baseball Notes,” pg. 11, col. 2:
He objects to being pictured as a member of the “dese, dem an’ dose” brigade.
 
Newspapers.com
8 Julu 1917, Cleveland (OH) Plain Dealer, “‘Tough Guy,’ and ‘No Kid,’ is Policeman Mangan,” Editorial-Dramatic section, pg. 6, col. 2:
Farther down the street “Jim” spots a crowd of Cleveland’s young-and-easy, whose dese-dem-and-dose lingo is music to his ears.
 
YouTube
DESE DEM DOSE by the Dorsey Brothers 1935
cdbpdx
Nov 1, 2010
 
American Dialect Society listserv
origin of dese dem dose in NYCE
Jonathan Lighter wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM
Sat Feb 11 00:27:45 UTC 2012
Since I haven’t done a careful analysis, all I can do is offer an
impression, based on what now seem like centuries of examining
vernacular American literature.
 
My impression and educated guess is that the “dese, dem, and dose”
phenomenon is not represented in white NYC speech (and in comical
contexts only) until the late 1880s. Within a decade it was a cliche’.

It was specifically associated with the Bowery and a little later the
Lower East Side, just as more recently it has been deemed specially
typical of Brooklyn.  Pressed further, I’d say it was most usually
associated with first- or second-generation Irish, Jewish, and Italian
immigrants.

An early ex.:

1887 _Tid-Bits_ (Jan. 15) 2: A can of benzine exploded in a Bowery
eating house the other day and the proprietor yelled down the kitchen
companion-way - “If yer spill any more of dat coffee I’ll massacree
yer!”
 
Needless to say, the forms “dis,” “dat,” “dese,” “dem,” and “dose” had
long been staples of printed representations of AAVE everywhere.