Re: English diglossia (was Re: retroflex consonants)

James Landau scripsit:

>  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.
RI treats "ough" as a separate case from "ou", since the variability is
much higher, and there are many more cases (about 9 different pronunciations
of "ough" altogether).  However, it's a rule of RI that "gh" is always
ignored in pronunciation after a vowel, so "ou" and "ough" are pronounced
the same way, viz. the long sound of "o".

--
John Cowan           http://www.ccil.org/~cowan              cowan@ccil.org
To say that Bilbo's breath was taken away is no description at all.  There
are no words left to express his staggerment, since Men changed the language
that they learned of elves in the days when all the world was wonderful.
        --_The Hobbit_