Re: OT: English and front rounded vowels

Mark J. Reed wrote:
>On Dec 10, 2007 9:07 AM, caeruleancentaur
> >
> > There is also an expression used by New Englanders, mainly by Vermonters
>I
> > believe.  I have no idea how it is spelled but it sounds something like
> > /e'@/.
>
>
>Usually grouped with "Ayup."
That was pretty much how we outlanders characterised local New Hampshire
speech, and IIRC it's the feature par excellence of Maine echt down-easter
dialect. One of my school-mates was Marshall Dodge, who had a bit of a
career as a comedian/monologist sending up his native Maine and its
peculiarities :-)))))))))))))
>
>"Yeah" is indeed /j&:/ for most of us over here, but some do pronounce it
>/jE/ (sometimes with a corresponding respelling to "yeh").  Typically this
>is a shortened version, spoken quickly.  Final /E/ is quite rare (though
>not
>unheard of) among us rhotic types, which is no doubt the reason that the
>vowel in "yeah" changed for us.
>
In South Dakota, everyone used [jA] "yah"? a lot, to the dismay of our
teachers. Hold-over no doubt from the plentiful German/Scandanavian
heritage. (I think my sister and I still use it, probably picked it up from
peers-- still, one gd.father was Swiss-German, but I don't recall my mother
~aunts using it, though they probably did.)

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