Re: English diglossia (was Re: retroflex consonants)

James Landau wrote:
>
> > "should" and "could" and "would" have the short "oo" sound, and about
> > 25 words have the long "oo" sound (e.g. group, soup, you, youth,
>(un)couth,
> > cougar, coup(on), rouge).
>
>  Coupe, bayou, tabbouleh, nougat, bouquet, boutique, bijou. Joule, while
>we're at bijou. Ghoul, toupée, ouzo, louvered, through. Let's see . . .
>we're
>up to 22. Douche. Crouton. Wound (as in injury, not twisted). (Counts them
>all up). That gives us safely 25. Only counting words that I'm definitely
>sure everybody pronounces with the sound, not the words that make for
>controversial pronunciation threads like "route" . . . or maybe "croup" and
>words like "croup" that I'm not really sure how to pronounce. I also didn't
>count proper nouns (which range from Houston to Ouagadougou to the Louvre).
>I
>also think the correct spelling for the adjective for people who practice
>the
>religion of Voodoo is "Voudoun". And "boulevard" has the same vowel sound
>as
>"could" and "would", even though it doesn't have an "ld" after it.
I don't think I've ever heard an actual native anglophone say "ghoul", but
my dictionary thinks it's [gaUl].

                                                       Andreas

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