Re: THEORY: free variation [was: Re: [OT] Re: Conlangea Dreaming]

Marcus Smith wrote:
> Hate to disagree here. I use both.
Interesting.  Around here, I almost never hear anything other than
/p@teto/ (or /pteto/ in rapid speach), and those who do say /p@tAto/, I
don't think I've heard /p@teto/ from.

But anyway, the point I was making was that there isn't a regular
alternation between [e] and [A], just in a couple of words, whereas the
variation I was talking about was, at least, as far as I understood, not
an alternation of phonemes, but of allophones of a single phoneme.

P.S., another jocular varient of "potato" that I sometimes use is
/'pAt@to/.  :-)