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Re: Status of Italian rising

From:Dirk Elzinga <dirk_elzinga@...>
Date:Tuesday, December 10, 2002, 22:00
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