Re: Sound Shifts

At 9:32 am -0400 20/4/99, John Cowan wrote:
>Raymond A. Brown wrote:
>
>> When I was young I
>> pronounced 'towel', 'tail' & 'tell' as homophones, namely: [tEw].
>
>"Tail" and "tell" just sound like phonological accent differences,
>but [tEw] for "towel" sounds like a genuinely lexical dialect
>difference.  Are there other examples of [@w] -> [E]?
I should, I guess, have explained that over much Kent, Sussex & Hampshire
standard English /aw/ is pronounced [Ew].  I pronounced my surname as
/brEwn/ well into my late teens.  Indeed, it wasn't till I got to
University that I made a conscious effort to acquire the standard /au/ - my
girl-friend had to understand me  ;)

BTW that meant that in Sussex 'our' was (and still largely is) pronounce
/E(r)/.  Many Sussex speakers have now lost the rhotacism but it still
survives in the more rural eastern part of the county.

Ray.

PS - I wasn't being serious about Greek fonts.   ;)