Re: Country names

John Cowan wrote:

>Tristan McLeay scripsit:
>
>
>>But be glad I don't come Queensland. There, the evening begins at noon
>>
>>
>This was traditionally true in the Southern U.S. also; Confederate
>influence on Qld dialect, maybe?
>
Possibly. The Labor Party started out in Qld, and one of the two
explanations for its spelling is that American union people helped found
it (the other being that at the turn of the 20th century (and in the
Melbourne _Age_ until 2001, though not, I understand, other Fairfax (who
publish _The Age_) papers), -or was common in Australia for -our,
meaning that we apparently have WWI memorials in honor of the
A(ustralian and )N(ew )Z(ealand )A(rmy )C(orp)s. By WWII, -our had
unfortunately become the norm in most places, so memorials from that
time on were all in honour of the Australians). And our rednecks come
from Qld, too.

>>(I don't know of
>>any word with unvoiced <zz> or <v>, but do know of at least 'dessert')
>>
>>
>
>Wijk
>
Regularized Inglish guy?

> says that the only words with "ss" that are regularly pronounced
>voiced (at least in RP and GA, the dialects he considers) are dessert,
>dissolve, hussar (which surprised me), possess, scissors, and sometimes
>hussy (which also surprised me).
>
I agree with your surprises, though 'hussy' isn't a word in my dialect.

>>Hence also pointing out the -th- in metho<methylated spirits
>>wasn't voiced.
>>
>>
>
>/D/ is a dead phoneme in English, and new words essentially never use it.
>It appears only intervocalically from the general voicing of intervocalic
>fricatives, finally where a final -e has been lost (breathe, e.g.), and
>initially in inherited structure words (the, them, their, those, etc. etc.)
>
Indeed, but I don't imagine it was any sort of concious decision to
voice these sounds. I would almost have expected it to help bring /D/
back to life, if I knew it hadn't. Though I don't think the voicing
would happen with an -sh+o/ie/a, but I can't think of any examples of
that. Is there anything that /s/ and /f/ have in common which /S/ and
/T/ don't have, or vice versa?

>>If I was after words that were part of WSE, I would've chosen 'dessert',
>>and 'carve'; I can't think of one with -zz- of the top of my head.
>>
>>
>
>You devoice the v in carve, making it [ka:f]?
>
>
No, I pronounce, and assumed that everyone pronounces, the v in carve as
/v/, the point being that the v represents as voiced /v/, rather than
any voicing process. I wasn't talking about devoicing other than to show
my assumptions with the expectations that people would realise I meant
the <ss>, <zz> and <v> to all be voiced, rather than unvoiced.

--
Tristan                  <kesuari@...>