Re: English [dZ]

On Sun, 11 Dec 2005 10:36:07 -0500, Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...> wrote:

>On 12/11/05, John Vertical <johnvertical@...> wrote:
>> >In "long u" (cute). In reflex of /ew/ (new).
>>
>> My non-native dialect still keeps those two distinct (the former is /ju:/ or
>> /u:/ while the latter is /jy/ or /y:/), but are there any native dialects
>> left that would still separate those two?
>
>I don't know of any dialects which have different vowels there, but
>there are many which make a distinction.  The dominant one in my
>region, for instance, drops the [j] in words like |new| and pronounces
>it as simply [nu] instead of [nju], while preserving the [j] in
>|cute|.  At least in the northeastern US in the mid-20th century, and
>probably elsewhere and elsewhen, the disappearance of [j] from such
>words has been a shibboleth used to distinguish the uneducated
>([nu]-sayers) from the edjucated ([nju]-sayers), which would imply
>that the [j] version is the conservative one.
This isn't a distinction between old /ew/ and 'long u' in any dialect I know
of.  It's just loss of the [j] after coronals, and it applies to both
spellings of [ju(:)]:

|cute| [kjut], |lute| [lut]
|pew| [pju], |new| [nu]

>> But what
>> about the /ju:/ in words like "lute"? They can't surely ALL be later
>> borrowings, re-spelt pGVS /o:/ or /eu/, or exceptions to the GVS.
>
>I don't know the answer, but I should point out that there was
>substantial overlap between the GVS and the standardization of English
>spelling.  It's not that words were re-examined and re-spelled after
>the shift; it's just that they were standardized at different points
>during the shift.
I seem to recall that even this [ju(:)] (exceptions aside) is indeed derived
from ME /eu/ or /iu/, and the spelling |u| is motivated by French |u| = [y].

Alex

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