Re: USAGE: Weird dialectal stuff

Melissa Phong wrote:
> For myself, I might write "I didn't used to," but I would say "I didn't
> use to."
> I simply can't pronounce that d without great difficulty and then only by
> putting a significant pause between used and to.
Do you mean that when you say "I used to" it sounds like "I useta"?
That's pretty much the normal pronunciation, just like "have to" and
"has to" have become "hafta" and "hasta".  Indeed, I can think of a
minimal pair:

What do you have to do? = What do you have that you can do? uses /h&v
tu/
What do you have to do? = What must you do? uses /h&ft@/

For "couldn't've" I have /kUd@n@(v)/

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