Re: tlhn'ks't, ngghlyam'ft, and other scary words

On Thursday 06 February 2003 11:18 am, Tristan wrote:
> John Cowan wrote:
> > Eight: bough, though, enough, cough, bought, through, hough, borough.
> > Not all dialects distinguish all of these.  (In RI they are
> > bough, tho, enuff, coff, baught, thru, hock, burro respectively.)
> > Even more remarkably, these eight pronunciations are distributed over
> > only about 30 words altogether.
>
> Are you sure about 'burro'? How is final-o-representing-/@/ any more
> regular than final-ough-representing-/@/? I would've expected 'burra',
> or 'burrough' at the very worst.
The 'o' is a) the unreduced form and b)the most common form outside of
Australia and NZ.

> Tristan.

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