Re: USAGE: Permissable /IN/ (was: [i:]=[ij]?)
From: | Nik Taylor <fortytwo@...> |
Date: | Friday, November 3, 2000, 6:01 |
Roger Mills wrote:
> I generally don't drop g's either, but it happens, it happens. We're an
> ever-diminishing minority.
I use both -ing (/iN/) and -in' (/In/), the proportions of -ing to -in
is, of course, higher in more formal settings then in less formal
settings. I seriously doubt I'd ever use -in' while reading, for
example, the biblical text at church, probably not even at Pizza and
Psalms, the student bible-study group at my church. But, in everyday
conversation, I'd guesstimate that the ration of -ing:-in' is probably
around 3:1.
In a related note, there's a notice where I work that has "taking" where
it should say "taken", which is rather annoying, I think. Apparently
the reason is that "taken" and "takin'" are homophones in the local
dialect (/tejkIn/), and so the person who wrote that notice must've
misanalyzed "taken" as "takin'" and so spelled that as "taking"!
--
Dievas dave dantis; Dievas duos duonos
God gave teeth; God will give bread - Lithuanian proverb
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