Re: Californian vowels [was Re: Liking German]

In a message dated 9/28/01 1:47:18 PM, trwier@MIDWAY.UCHICAGO.EDU writes:

<< I have a question for you:  is it true that Southern Californians lower

[I] before /l/ in "milk" (> [mElk])? I've heard tell that that's the case,

but it was entirely anecdotal, so suspect to questioning. (My informant

tells me that she was trying to persuade a Southern Californian that

Southern Californians do, indeed, have distinct accents just like every

other human being, a fact which this Californian was apparently held in

doubt.) >>

    Ha, ha, ha!  Yes, many a California probably doubt this, as well.  I
didn't realize that [mELk] was Southern Californian; I assumed everyone
everywhere did it naturally, if they did it.  I sometimes do it, sometimes
don't--more often in "pillow", actually.  But not thinks like "pill" or
"mill" or "spill"--we can easily make a distinction between "spill" and
"spell", "fill"/"fell", "pill"/"pell", "mill"/"mell" (pell mell?).  But with
"milk", "pillow"...geez, I think that's it.  There's never been confusion
between "ilk"/"elk", or, thinking it might be a bilabial thing, between
"billow"/"bellow".  Huh.  Anyway, it is something that we can recognize,
though.  In fact, my girlfriend made fun of me the other day for saying
[p_hELo_)w] rather than with [I].  (Of course, but also always tend to pick
out things that she does, like retroflex [s] rather than [S]...)  Huh.  How
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.

-David

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