Re: more English orthography

Roger Mills wrote:

> Similar neutralization before /r/ seems to be characteristic of most General
> Midwestern speech, maybe all American except Southern(?).
No, I have the Mary/marry/merry distinction, and I was born north of Macey-Dixie.
I think this isogloss encloses the Eastern Seaboard as well as the South.

> Occasionally I do have/A/ in just two words:  water, and rather.  _Water_
> was changed because my Midwestern (probably nasalized, too) ['wa:t@r] was
> just too much for my (upper class, Eastern) boarding-school-mates and was
> the object of much derision (along with my general 14-year-old  nerdiness).
> _Rather_ seems to have (been?) changed as a general result of 12 years
> residence in Eastern US/Boston/New York, plus a certain tinge of
> Anglophilia, and a desire not to be hopelessly marked as a Middle Westerner.
> 30 years in Michigan have eroded a lot of that.
It sounds like you are using /A/ to describe a *rounded* back vowel, which
is properly /Q/.  /A/ is the unrounded back vowel; /a/ is the unrounded
central vowel.

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