Gershwin says "ersters" and I say baloney - alt.usage.english

Message from discussion Gershwin says "ersters" and I say baloney

Areff

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More options Jun 28 2004, 2:59 pm

Newsgroups: alt.usage.english

From: Areff <m...@privacy.net>

Date: 28 Jun 2004 18:59:41 GMT

Local: Mon, Jun 28 2004 2:59 pm

Subject: Re: Gershwin says "ersters" and I say baloney

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Don A. Gilmore wrote:

> "Bob Cunningham" <exw6...@earthlink.net> wrote in message
> news:0mo0e0pig208k4b1vvai0kfb74q1slciv0@4ax.com...
>> > Well, that reminds me of how the CIC speakers in this newsgroup,
>> > particularly the Western CICs, have never satisfactorily explained how
> it
>> > is they know that a doctor says "Say 'Ahhhhh'" rather than "Say
> 'Awwwww'",

>> Doesn't matter: They both say the same thing.

>> > and how it is they know that the "pity/adorable sound" is "Awwwww" and
> not
>> > "Ahhhhh".

>> They don't know that, since the two sounds are the same.
>> They may know that the spelling is "Ah", not "Aw", just as
>> they know that the spelling of "top" is not "tahp" or
>> "tawp", even though they would be pronounced the same.

> No they wouldn't. Do you pronounce the name "Don" the same as you pronounce
> "dawn". If you do, you are mispronouncing one or both of them.

I wouldn't say that, of course. But I do wonder whether CIC speakers are
more likely to make certain sorts of spelling mistakes -- it seems that
they must (e.g. "cot" for "caught" -- for some reason I can't easily
imagine someone writing "caught" for "cot", maybe because the spelling is
less 'phonetic', so to say).

Whoa -- I get over 600 hits for "it donned on me"!
Over 300 for "got cot", a lot of which seem to be 'got caught' usages.

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