USAGE: turquoise badminton waistcoat (was: Re: USAGE Re: Language revival)

TURQOISE
me:
> > How about "turquoise"? We're probably united in our
> > disgust at /'t3:kw&z/~/'t3:kwA:z/, but I'd have
> > thought I'm close to being the only /'t3:kwOIs/ sayer.
Nik:
> That's close to my pronunciation: /tr=kojz/
John:
> /tr,kojz/, with no labialization.
That (and its nonrhotic equivalent /'t3:kOIz/), I believe,
is very much the standard, replacing the (long-dead?) former
standard /'tr.kIs/ ~ /'t3;kIs/.

I'd hitherto assumed that my /'t3:kwOIs/ was an idiosyncratic
and essentially solecistic spelling-pronunciation independently
acquired by me at so young an age as to render it thenceforth
incorrigible. However:

Ray:
> >but I'd have thought I'm close to being the only /'t3:kwOIs/ sayer.
>
> No, that's how I've always pronounced it - and still do.
Paul:
> /t3:kwOIs/
So it seems as though I've stumbled on a widespread variant not
documented by any of the dictionaries I've consulted. (As happens to
an extraordinary extent in my Dialects class; we're always discovering
undocumented but not purely idiolectal linguistic variants. Not just
in matters as trivial as the pronunciation of individual words, either.)

BADMINTON
nicole perrin:
> Padraic Brown wrote:
> >
> > On Tue, 30 Nov 1999, John Cowan wrote:
> >
> > >nicole perrin wrote:
> > >> I pronounce all the letters in badminton.
> > >
> > >Er, me too:  /b&dmInt,n/.
> >
> > There's an "n" in there!?  I always thought it was badmitten or
> > similar.
>
> LOL.  yes, I say /b&dmInt@n/ and get a lot of "what?  there's an n?  you
> can't say it that way!"
Nik:
> Actually, I didn't even notice the {n} there.  I also say /b&dmItIn/ or
> /b&dmitn=/
This is a new one on me; I've never noticed anything other than /b&dmIntn/.
I wonder whether it is a reanalysis resulting from certain realization
rules of /ntn/ in American accents, illustrable rather strikingly with
the following example (~ = nasalization; _ = creak)

                                   /sEntns/
  nasal spread (V > V~ / _ nasal)   sE~ntns
  glottaling (t > ? / _ n)          sE~n?ns
  desegmentalization (Vn > V~)      sE~?ns
  desegmentalization (V? > V_)      sE~_ns

once you've got to the final stage, the realization is the same as you'd
get with */sEtns/. With a not-very-well-known word such as "badminton",
then people hearing [b&dmI~_n] might not be sure whether it is
/b&dmIntn/ or /b&dmItn/, and make the wrong choice.


WAISTCOAT
John:
> > Never heard it. But I'm a /weIsk@Ut/ sayer.
>
> /wEskIt/ for me, but it's not really live vocabulary.
What do you call them, then? "Vest"? Or does "vest" mean "jacket"? I
forget. (As you know, "singlet" = "vest" (or is that only in Australian?).)

I'm sure they get worn in America. (Doesn't the Charles Foster Kane
character in the Simpsons wear one?)


Paul:
> AFM Ideolect:
> I'm a bit hazy on the vowels, but I think I've about nailed 'em
> down, based on other peoples examples The vowel in "often" different to
> the vowel in "forehead", I think.  The vowel in "tortoise" and "forehead"
> is closer to the vowel in "caught", the vowel in "often" is nearer to the
> vowel in "hot".
Yes.

> /tO:t@sIz/
> /Oft@n/ in careful speech, /Ofn=/ (or maybe /Of@n/) in colloquial
> /fO:hEd/ in careful speech, /'fOrId/ in colloquial (it does get
> me a few funny looks!)
> /vInjA:d/ (? I think, if /A:/ is the same vowel as I use in "ask"
> and at the start of "garden")
Yes. (Me: /vInj@d/)

> /weIsk@Ut/
> /b&dmIn?n=/ in extreme cases /b&d_?mI?n=/ ?
> /mVndi/
> /t_SjU:sdi/ !?
> me>>>>>>
> /t_SjU:sdi/ !?
> <<<<<<
>
> Sorry, you should read that as /t_SjU:zdi/
tSu:zdi

> /wEnzdi/
> /T3:zdi/
> /frajdi/
> /s&t@_rdi/ (in colloqiual usage, this can become /s&?di/)
/s&t@di/ (regularly realized [s&?di])

> /sVndi/
>
> ISTR that And (& Lars?) said something about my home town (Milton
> Keynes) being a dialectical melting pot, which may explain what looks
> like a mix of old and new forms.
The only thing that surprises me is the careful/colloquial distinction
you make with "forehead" and "often". Milton Keynesian is not so much
an eclectic ragbag of an accent as a kind of lowest-common-denominator
southeastern. That is, people are probably less likely to tell you're
from MK than if you were from any other place!


and lastly, John:
> > They're nigh on universal among the young. In class, I ask "Who
> > says [X]" (where X is /Ofn=/, /fOrId/, /tO:t@s/); noone answers &
> > I say "really? noone?" and then someone says "my granddad does" &
> > sic transit one thinks gloria monday.
>
> As I told the man who bemoaned the downfall of Latin teaching:
> tempora mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis.  (Skewered him on two
> levels, eh.)
As so often happens when I seek to have a clue about what you were on
about, my meagre erudition let me down still clueless & I had to ask my
spouse. From her explanation it sounded like you skewered him on half
a dozen levels; but had I been the skeweree, the pertransition of the
skewerings would have been too subtle for me to be sensible of them.

--And.