Re: þe getisbyrg adres

Gary Shannon said:
>
> As a kid in the 1950's (US midwest) I had a friend who
> pronounced the 'h' in words like "when", "which" and
> "what".  Even that far back it seemed stilted and
> artificial to me.  Virtually everyone I personally
> know under the age of 60 pronounces those words "wen",
> "wich" and "wut". (US Pacific Northwest)  Not a trace
> of the 'h' is left.

I think the voiceless phoneme must still be alive in some lects. I have
it, including minimal pairs "which/witch", "what/watt", "whether/weather"
etc.  I was born (in 1956) and raised in the South Midland dialect band of
the US, in northeastern Oklahoma. Most of my vowels have adapted somewhat
to SAE, but my consonants are generally the same as my mom's and
siblings'.

My speech also seems to be an outlier in its complete lack of alveolar or
even velarized alveolar laterals: all my laterals are velar (apical
articulator below the bottom teeth), in all contexts. This causes me to
have a voiceless velar lateral allophone (in forms like "clay") that even
Ken Pike said he didn't think ever occurred even phonetically in any
natlang. *shrug*


-- Mhark

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