Re: Status of Italian rising

At 3:53 PM -0500 12/10/02, John Cowan wrote:
>Dirk Elzinga scripsit:
>
>> Northern varieties of both American and
>> British English may realize these vowels as monophthongs.
>
>Really?  Wow.  I've always known that my long-e and long-o are tenser
>than that of other Americans, but I've never heard anyone from these parts
>using monophthongs.  Or do you mean "Northern" in a geographical rather
>than a dialect-name sense?  I didn't think CanE did that either.
In Minnesota, the /o/ is definitely not a diphthong (my sister-in-law has this
pronunciation of /o/); it's one of the stereotypical features of that variety.
My information about the monophthongal nature of the tense mid vowels comes
from J. C. Wells, _Accents of English_. He states that monophthongization is a
"generally northern pronunciation both in England and in the United States, as
well as characterizing the Celtic countries and the West Indies."

Dirk
--
Dirk Elzinga                                               Dirk_Elzinga@byu.edu

"It is important not to let one's aesthetics interfere with the appreciation of
fact." - Stephen Anderson