Theiling Online    Sitemap    Conlang Mailing List HQ   

Re: USAGE: (sorry YAEPT) /wIT/ or /wID/

From:Roger Mills <rfmilly@...>
Date:Friday, December 8, 2006, 17:20
Daniel Prohaska wrote:

> Hi Benct, > I don't know about Anglo-Irish, but USEnglish has [wIT] as an alternate > pronunciation of [wID]. the latter form is listed first in "A Pronouncing > Dictionary of American English" by Kenyon/Knott, but with the explicit > statement that [wIT] is not substandard.
Well, how nice of them to add that. I hate to argue with 2 eminent lexicographers, but in my rather long life I've seldom heard and (probably) never used [wiD]. (Even in parodied Black speech, it's [wif].) Same for /wiT'awt/ (and "within"), though there the tendency to voice /T/ in intervocalic pretonic position in casual/fast speech could certainly happen. Admittedly I'm not much in contact with younger generations, so things could be changing. Had I been in charge of writing that dictionary entry, I'd have put [wiT] first, with a comment that [wiD, wiD'awt] are possibilities in unstressed, casual environments. And "not substandard".

Reply

daniel prohaska <danielprohaska@...>