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Re: "write him" was Re: More questions

From:Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...>
Date:Friday, November 28, 2003, 3:57
On Thu, Nov 27, 2003 at 09:32:39PM -0500, Tristan McLeay wrote:
> Neither the words 'stop-cock' (well, maybe this does, but I've never heard > it, but IANA plumber) nor 'faucet' exist in Oz; we call them 'taps'. Most > people would turn the tap off, though I have heard 'close the tap'.
An oddity (to me) of my wife's pronunciation is that she sometimes says "close the light" to mean "turn the light off".
> The thing I'm more concerned about: in dialects that use 'faucet' and > distinguish short o from au (i.e. say bot and bought differently)
In my 'lect I don't normally distinguish, pronouncing both [A], but if I put myself in the mode or mood to make that distinction, then "faucet" falls squarely in [O] territory.
> 'Valve' is such a technical term.
Over here it is "stopcock" which is the technical term, referring to a very specific type of pipe-stopping device, whereas "valve" is more general. "Valve" isn't restricted usage-wise to the metal-on-metal devices John mentioned, although they are the archetypical "valve" that probably springs to mind absent other context. -Mark