Re: YAEPT Re: OE diphthongs/breaking (was: Re: Germanic vowel correspondences

On Tue, Jul 22, 2008 at 9:25 PM, Tristan McLeay <conlang@...> wrote:
> (On the other hand I seem to recall some surprise when I realised
> Eeyore's had a y in it. Real donkeys have a glottal stop in the middle
> of their sound.
Real donkeys may invariably have the glottal stop, but I've heard the
"animal sound" both ways.

> I gather that the r at the end is what confuses/makes it
> less transparent to rhotic Americans, though.
Completely opaque to rhotic Americans, in my experience, until either
it's pointed out to us or we get enough experience with non-rhotic
dialects that it just clicks.  The latter happened with me; it was
quite an epiphany.  "Hey!  Eeyore's name is THE SOUND A DONKEY
MAKES!!!"

>> Also, of course, his name is more properly spelled "Wol".
> This one I completely don't get.
Among the evidence of Owl's "wisdom" is his ability to write his name,
which he demonstrates for Pooh: W-O-L.  Besides poking fun at Owl's
intellectual self-assessment, I gather this is a dialectical
pronunciation of "owl" - Wikipedia says it's Kentish/Sussex thing.

--
Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...>

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