Re: THEORY: language and the brain [Interesting article]

Staving John Leland:
>Personally, I grew up pronouncing the Hobbitish Took like the English
>verb, rhyming with book, but later on I found out that Tolkien apparently
>intended it to be pronounced like spook--IIRC he sometimes wrote it tuk
>with a circumflex over the u, which was his way of signalling that sound.
Time to invoke Bleackley's Law...
I pronounce "book", "look", and "Took" to rhyme with "spook". This would be
normal in northern English pronunciations.

I would say that Northern English renders "bathroom" as [b&Tru:m], whereas
Southern English renders it as [ba:TrUm] (if I've got this tense/lax thing
right- I think it's less important than length in my own speech, but
analysing one's own habits can be misleading).

Pete

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