Re: OT: Two countries separated by a common language

Mark J. Reed wrote:

>On Sun, May 18, 2003 at 12:27:24AM +1000, Tristan McLeay wrote:
>
>
>>No, vegemite is Australian for nutella :) (Though I wouldn't try eating
>>them the same way... nutella and cheese sounds like a rather revolting
>>idea, nor would one want to use too much vegemite. Or putting nutella in
>>bolognese sauce...)
>>
>>
>Eyeugh.  Yeah. :)
>
>
You get nutella in the US these days then? I was under the impression
you didn't.

>>I understand they regard /gra:f/ as a Melbournism. Admittedly, I say
>>/t&l@gra:f/ and /p&r@gra:f/, but I only do that in compounds.
>>
>>
>
>You prounounce "telegraph" as [t&l@gra:f]?
>
Yup: celery and salary and shell and shall are homophones for me. Not
that I say shall that often. (When I first came across the word 'salary'
(which is in speech), I thought it was spelt the same way as the veggie.)

>That seems odd to me.
>
Well, your paragraph as ["pE`r\@%gr&f] sounds odd to me. :) This is a
perfectly common aspect of Melburnian[1]  speech for under ~25s,
apparently. No-one from Melbourne notices really notices that it's
specific to us, as far as I know. Americans with all their funniness of
/E/ or /&/ before /r/ is noticeable; Americans saying [El] is not. But
perhaps your /E/ is low enough to mask the difference...

[1]: And apparently generally all of Victoria and it mysteriously stops
at the border, which is funny given the twin towns like Albury-Wodonga
or Echuca and Moama, where one is in New South Wales and the other in
Victoria (A.-W. is considered one town by most people; Albury is on the
NSW side and larger, and Wodonga gets a NSW area code in spite of it
being in Victoria. Most Melburnians have heard of Echuca, but few of
Moama, which is somewhat smaller.)

>I haven't run into examples of phonemic /E/ turning into [&].  Although the
>reverse seems common enough in certain circumstances, and in fact my
>pronunciation of "paragraph" is pretty much ['pE`r\@,gr&f].  First
>syllable sounds just like "pear" or "pair", rhming with "hair", "care",
>etc.  All rhoticized short e's in my idiolect.
>
>
Well, I've got the full range of /&/, /e/ and /e:/ before /r/, but  only
before a vowel. When not, I only have /e:/, so /p&r@gra:f/ sounds
nothing like /pe:/. :)

--
Tristan                  <kesuari@...>

Replies