Re: another silly phonology question

On Wed, Nov 29, 2000 at 06:43:05AM +0000, Raymond Brown wrote:
> >> Nuffink   :-)
>
> >No? " nuffin "? Wo? sor? a burk says " nuffink "? :)
>
> Same sort as say /'EnifINK/ and /'sVmfINK/.  I shall hear these words again
> today - but I'd better not name the burks as some are colleagues I work
> with (or should I say 'wiv'?).
In the English East Midlands we used to say /'s@m@t/ for "something", where
does that come from? "Anything" and "nothing" were usually /owt/ and /nowt/
so I suppose there wouldn't be much tradition of saying /n@TIn/ etc., these
would be loan words!

> One also hears /nVfIn/ and /nVfn=/ and, strangely, /nV?n/.
That last is starting to look rather scandanavian

> In fact in pre-19th cent. English, final unstressed -ing had become -In in
> practically everyone's speech and is still one of the marks of
> "aristocratic" speech (those who spend their time huntin', shootin' &
> fishin') and, of course, of 'lower class' speech.  But the spread of
> universal education and the rise of the middle classes in the 19th cent.
> led to the restoration of the "correct sound" (i.e. a spelling
> pronunciation).
The town of Stirling in Central Scotland is historically Stirlin << Strevelin
and the traditional local pronounciation is [-in]. Here the written form
has been corrected, from the "corrupt" spoken form, although in this case
it turns out that the peasants were right. I'm sure there are many
similar cases.

> The /-INk/ pronunciations seem to have arisen from an attempt by those who
> habitually said -In wanting to "talk posh" - it seems to have become
> established in certain areas.
There again, perhaps it's a traditional stressed variant. Nuffink is
usually stressed as in "I aint got nuffink!" etc.
(Although we'd probably have said [@ e:n 'gO? ow?]).
>
> Ray.
Keith