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

Tristan scripsit:

> 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.
It's a rule in RI that "gh" after vowels does not change the sound,
so "ough" in RI has the same sound as "ou"/"ow", as in about, how.
The reason for choosing -o in borough, thorough, etc. is that the
American pronunciation in these words is the long sound of "o",
so it's diaphonetic to use -o.  (Exception: fellow, which gets /@/ in AmE.
except in elevated style.)

With very few exceptions, such as this one, RI does not fiddle with the
spellings of unstressed vowels.  There are basically two cases,
which I make [@] and [I-], but exactly how these are distributed is
extremely variable across dialects, and if you get it wrong, it's no
disaster (I use [Id] for the past tense ending when it is a separate
syllable, but I certainly understand [@d], e.g.).  The only other
change is final unstressed -ain, which becomes -en to avoid confusion
with stressed -ain; thus capten, bargen, but detain, retain.

--
John Cowan           http://www.ccil.org/~cowan              cowan@ccil.org
To say that Bilbo's breath was taken away is no description at all.  There
are no words left to express his staggerment, since Men changed the language
that they learned of elves in the days when all the world was wonderful.
        --_The Hobbit_

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