Re: Future English

On 10 Feb 2005, at 9.07 am, Kevin Athey wrote:

>> From: Doug Dee <AmateurLinguist@...>
>>
>> The merger of /O/ and /A/ in much of the Western US.
>> The merger of /I/ and /E/ before nasals in much of the South.
>> The merger of /w/ and /W/ for most Americans
>> The loss of /h/ before /j/ for many Americans, leading to "Hugo" =
>> "Yugo".
I was talking to someone who did that once. I couldn't tell for the
life of me what he was trying to say when he was saying 'yooman'. But I
suppose it's merely the analogue of the /w~W/ merger that almost all
dialects seem to share.

> I haven't heard the last one much, but I've always assumed it
> happened.  The
> merger of /O/ into /A/ is interesting because, although I do it, I
> don't
> notice in other's speech whether they do or not.  This is very rare
> for me.
I think it's quite common to not notice distinctions you don't make,
especially when other dialects *do* make such distinctions. I don't
distinguish /&l/ from /el/ (i.e. celery and salary are homophones). I
couldn't tell you if someone I was talking to did though (even though I
can distinguish, say, 'mat' and 'met').

> I was thinking about /I/ and /E/ before nasals, and it seems I have
> that
> merger only partially.  "Pen" is /pIn/ for me, but the name of the
> letter is
> /En/, the question word is /wEn/ (not /WEn/), the number is /tEn/ and
> so
> forth.  In fact, other than "pin" and "pen", I can't think of a single
> example of this merger in my speech.  Granted, I'm not from the south.
>  I
> suppose this means that the merger doesn't exist at all for me and
> that I
> just borrowed /pIn/ from a neighboring 'lect.  (i.e. It is a true
> homophone.)
Interesting.

--
Tristan.

Reply