Re: Californian vowels [was Re: Liking German]

>weird.  So there's "milk", "pillow" and "marshmallow" (one I just
>remembered), but those seem to be the only three...  As to your question,
>it's true, I assumed it was true for all English speakers (especially
>children), but its environment seems to be incredibly limited.
'marshmallow'? Why does that fall into that category?

I've always pronounced it /mA:S"mEl@u/, but thats just because /El/ is
realised as [&l] (/&l/ being [&:l], except in the odd case, such as
/SEl/='shall' and 'shell', where the [&] wasn't lengthened*). So
/mA:S"mEl@u/=[mA:S"m&l8u], which brings us back to the spelling...

*Yes, this is a general Melburnian (if not Victorian or Australian) thing.

Tristan

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