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

From:And Rosta <a.rosta@...>
Date:Wednesday, December 1, 1999, 22:08
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.