Re: Hiatus within words

On Mon, Oct 30, 2000 at 08:38:12PM -0500, Roger Mills wrote:
[snip]
>         I can't think of with a single form in my (fairly standard Midwest)
> Engl. with [...aV...] except furrin loans like "paella".   I believe
> Southern US, with [a] or [A] for my /ay/, would avoid hiatus in words like
> "tire, fire" by simply lengthening the [a] -- [ta:r] [fa:r], though the /r/
> may be a schwa.  I don't think I've ever heard [ta?@(r)] or [fa?@r].
In Malaysia, they are pronounced [tai@r] and [fai@r], perhaps also
[taijV"r] and [faijV"r]. (Corrupt pronunciations may also go as far as
[tajar] or [taiah] for "tire"; the Malay loan of "tire" is "tayar").

[snip]
>         One reason for the ridicule:  those who speak the standard dialect
> (basically midwestern) are (or were, in my day) definitely given the
> impression that those stray r's are very "ignorant" and "low-class".  In my
> grade-school days, there was a handful of kids who said "idear" and "sofer"
> (sofa), much to the teachers' wrath. (It's hard to say where the feature
> came from--it didn't follow the Eastern US rule--  and they didn't say
> "Cuber")
Interesting. I observed English L2 speakers saying "idear" instead of
"idea" too.

[snip]
>         To pontificate:  probably most. (Plus, 'dua' descends from an
> original Austronesian CVCV *duha.).  Teoh mentions in his reply that
> Malaysians sometimes say [dwa]-- I never heard that in Indonesia. (But I can
> imagine it as a fast-speech emphatic form.)
[snip]

Yes, [dwa] occurs in fast speech. Interestingly, [duwa] is the most common
pronunciation of "dua"; I'd say [du?a] never occurs except in poetry where
syllable breaks are emphasized.


T