Re: English diglossia (was Re: retroflex consonants)

In a message dated 1/31/2003 4:14:11 AM Pacific Standard Time, 
jcowan@REUTERSHEALTH.COM writes:

> The great majority of all ou/ow words have the sound of "how".  There
> are only about 35 words (plus their derivatives) with the long "o" sound.
> Additionally, "knowledge" and "acknowledge" have the short "o" sound,
> about 10 words have the short "u" sound (e.g. double, country, cousin),
 Let's see . . . young, southern . . . rough, tough, enough . . . have I 
gotten them all . . . touch . . . trouble, double, no wait, you already have 
"double". Douglas fir, if eponyms count, and couple. And moustache. I guess 
you could say we have at least a dozen.

> "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.


> Is 'route' spelt two ways, or does it retain its present spelling, or> 
> > does something weird happen to it? I talk of bus /r0:ts/, you, I would
> > imagine, of bus /rauts/.
> 
> I talk of /rauts/ only in computer contexts, but say /ruts/ for bus routes,
> etc.  The latter pron. is native, the former is a borrowing from more 
> Western
> (N.A.) dialects.
 That's strange, since I live in the West, in fact I live in Moraga, which in 
right in the center of that Silicon Valley Circle, and I definitely say 
/rut/. In fact I was confused a little while after the first few times I 
heard people pronounce the word as /raut/.

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