Re: USAGE: Language revival

On Mon, 29 Nov 1999, Raymond Brown wrote:

>At 1:04 pm -0500 29/11/99, John Cowan wrote:
>[...]
>>
>>There are English-speakers who pronounce a /t/ in "often", too, but I don't
>>know that I'd call that a dialect exactly.  It may represent a
>>hypercorrection,
>
>It's a spelling pronunciation and has become increasingly more common over
>here during my lifetime.
I don't have a 't' in there, more offen than not. :)  Though I've
heard it with some frequency in others.

>
>>like the American usual pronunciation of "nephew" as /nEfju/, instead of the
>>historically correct /nEvju/ (still preserved in the U.K., I think?),
>
>...by us old'uns, certainly.
>But /nEfju/ is now quite common also - another spelling pronunciation.
>
>[...]
>>> > Trivium: "Straight" and its immediate derivatives are the only English
>>> > words with "aigh"; it's pronounced [ej].
>>> >
>>>
>>>         I learned it with [E]. Is it a possible pronunciation in some
>>>dialect?
>>
>>Maybe some, but I've never heard it.
>
>Never heard it either.
Only by (some) native Spanish speakers: something like [EstrEt].  I
say it with [e] (not [ej]).

Padraic.

>
>Ray.
>
>=========================================
>A mind which thinks at its own expense
>will always interfere with language.
>                   [J.G. Hamann 1760]
>=========================================
>