Re: English diglossia

Joseph Fatula wrote:

>And any distinction involving r-dropping or not will be a mess.  I'm not
>very familiar with any of the r-dropping dialects, so if someone could tell
>me some of the words that are made homophones by that, perhaps we could
>figure out some of this here.
>
Basically words that differ only by what followers are merged. (Because
I'm nice, I'm generally using the RP vowel (using /&/ for 'at' in the
note) because it seems to be closer to the American)
    /@/ (unstressed schwa) vs /@r/: races/racers
    /O:/ (clawed, not clod) vs /O:r/: saw/sore
To the above, in some dialects, /u:r/ may be added: sure/Shaw/shore
    /A:/ (father, not bother) vs /Ar/: pass*/parse
    /I@/ vs /I:r/: idea/'eye deer' (Q: what do you call a deer with no
eyes? A: No idea/No-eye deer. Q2: What do you call a deer with no eyes
or legs? A2: Still no-eye deer.)

I think that's about it, but it's not the full list of what happens when
Rs drop. Some sounds are actually pulled apart: long A/E before R+vowel
is a different phoneme from e.g. long A/E before L+vowel (or short e/i
R+vowel). (long A=bay etc.)

*In most, if not all, non-rhotic dialects, another change occured
lengthening then /a/ (at) to then /a:/ before /s/, /T/, /D/, /f/ in
closed syllables. It also sometimes happened in open syllables. Some
words were for some reason not affected by it that should've been.
Class, classy, pass, fast, bastard, plaster, path, rather, laugh,
laughter all have /A:/. Classic, ass (both donkey and the other sense),
lass, mass have /&/. Plastic, apparently, can be either, but I have /&/.

A similar change happened with /O/ (got) to /O:/, but this, I believe,
is more likely to have been reversed so I don't bother mentioning it.

>
>
HTH
Tristan.

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