Re: Country names

On Sun, 11 May 2003, Stone Gordonssen wrote:

> >That's also horribly wrong, and verges on the inadvertently offensive. We
> >realise that it's not Americans fault they have a speech impediment,
>
> Oh? And the Aussies don't? ROTFL
Of course not. Ours is the only correct speech. :P

> >so we'll probably ignore it, but we are not 'arsey'. The <ss> is as
>
> I didn't say either ["A`.si] or ["Ar\`.si]
I know, but [Asi] sounds like 'arsey' to us, and we're the people you're
talking about when you talk of [Asiz] after all. (We pronounce 'arsey' as
/a:si/. The American unrounded[1] 'cot'/'caught'-vowel(s) sound(s) like
/a:/ to us.)

[1]: The rounded ones sound like the vowel in 'gone', which is a longer
version of the vowel in 'cot' (in our pronunciation!!).

> >Say 'Aussie' to rhyme with 'mozzie'[1], and she'll be right, mate.
>
> Now we're back to "Ozzies" ["a.ziz] or ["az.ziz].
No, we've got a word spelt 'Aussie' and pronounced to rhyme with 'mozzie'.
It follows the rules of English orthography, at least in the dialect it
was coined. Likewise, 'dude' is pronounced /du\wd/, which follows the
rules of English orthography in the dialect it was coined, though not in
mine (which would prefer /dZu\wd/).

The other option is just to call us Australians, and we won't call the lot
of yas 'yanks'. Or to incite mass revolution resulting in a spelling
reform so that we spell it with the IPA :P

--
Tristan                  <kesuari@...>

Yesterday I was a dog. Today I'm a dog. Tomorrow I'll probably still
be a dog. Sigh! There's so little hope for advancement.
                -- Snoopy

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