Re: CHAT: (no subject)

On Tue, Aug 03, 2004 at 11:57:20AM -0700, Gary Shannon wrote:
> Hence "nooB" for "newbie".  I remember my parents and
> grandparents including the glide, but not my
> generation (b.1945 US midwest).
Yeah, I'm almost a generation younger than you (b.1968 US northeast),
and I've always been in the "uneducated philistine" camp myself, as are
both my parents, although my maternal grandmother has the glide.
My knowledge of the distinction with regard to judgements of erudition
is necessarily secondhand, but I didn't think it was that outdated.  No
longer ago than the 60s, anyway.

> As a kid in the 1950's (US midwest) I had a friend who
> pronounced the 'h' in words like "when", "which" and
> "what".  Even that far back it seemed stilted and
> artificial to me.  Virtually everyone I personally
> know under the age of 60 pronounces those words "wen",
> "wich" and "wut". (US Pacific Northwest)  Not a trace
> of the 'h' is left.
Same here.  The initial [w] only becomes [W] in what I call
"hypercorrect mode", which I fall into when it is necessary to make an
audible distinction e.g. between "win" and "when".  For me, both of
those words are [wIn] normally, but the latter becomes [WEn] in hyper mode.

-Marcos

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