Re: OT: Two countries separated by a common language

On Sun, May 18, 2003 at 10:00:37AM +1000, Tristan McLeay wrote:
> You get nutella in the US these days then? I was under the impression
> you didn't.
I have personally partaken of Nutella within the borders of the US,
but I have not tried to purchase it, so I don't know how hard that might
be. :)

> >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.)
So the /E/->[&] only happens before /l/, then.  Interesting.

> >That seems odd to me.
> >
> Well, your paragraph as ["pE`r\@%gr&f] sounds odd to me. :)
No doubt!  I meant no criticism - it's just novel to me. :)

> Americans with all their funniness of
> /E/ or /&/ before /r/ is noticeable;
What funniness is that?  Examples like my "paragraph"?

> Well, I've got the full range of /&/, /e/ and /e:/ before /r/.
Hm.  No [&] or [e] before /r\/ in my idiolect; always [E] ("care") or
[A] ("car").

> before a vowel. When not, I only have /e:/, so /p&r@gra:f/ sounds
> nothing like /pe:/. :)
In my case it's definitely [pE]; pronouncing "paragraph" with [pe:]
is a feature of some dialects, though; I associate it with
stereotypically drawled Southern or Kennedyesque Massachussettsian.

On a slightly related note, my wife mocks me because I pronounce
"measure" as ["meiZ@`r\] instead of ["mEZ@`r\]; it doesn't rhyme
with either "treasure" or "pleasure", both of which have the
[E].  I don't know why that is.

-Mark

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