Re: Spelling pronunciations (was: rhotic miscellany)

From:    "B. Garcia" <madyaas@...>
> On Mon, 8 Nov 2004 08:54:15 -0500, John Cowan <jcowan@...> wrote:
> > /@gejn(st)/ seems British to me, and
> > /Et/ comes across as an archaic vulgarism, the sort of thing my father
> > (1904-1993) said when he was being funny.
>
> My grandmother (born 1920) was raised on a farm in the north eastern
> corner of Kansas, and she often says /Et/ where I say /ejt/. To me the
> use of /Et/ has a Kansan quality to it, much like using /wArS/ for
> /wAS/
More likely, it is more characteristic of the upper Southern /
Apalachian dialects from which Kansan derives.  Certainly,
hypercorrection to /wArS/ "wash" would only arise in a nonrhotic
dialect; this suggests something no further than about 100-200
miles from the Atlantic, either East- or Gulf Coast.

ObConlang:  If I get any time this weekend, I'll be posting a
comparison of weak-crossover phenomena in Phaleran an C'ali,
and certain kinds of thematic inversion in C'ali.

 =========================================================================
Thomas Wier	       "I find it useful to meet my subjects personally,
Dept. of Linguistics    because our secret police don't get it right
University of Chicago   half the time." -- octogenarian Sheikh Zayed of
1010 E. 59th Street     Abu Dhabi, to a French reporter.
Chicago, IL 60637

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