Gershwin says "ersters" and I say baloney
Michael West
evening, I noticed that the character played by
Fred Astaire (who in turn was played by Frederic
Austerlitz, Jr of Omaha, Nebraska) pronounced
"Denise" with an "s" sound, while his friend,
played by Edward Everett Horton, played by Ed
Horton of Brooklyn, pronounced "Denise" with a
"z" sound. They were talking about the same
person.
Another odd thing was the way the character
played by Ginger Rogers, who was played by
Virginia Katherine McMath of Independence,
Missouri ("Jinja" being a child's pronunciation
of "Virginia"), pronounced "secretive" -- with
the second syllable stressed. AHD sanctions this
pronunciation, but it sounds like something to
do with secretions rather than secrets.
Also, as terrific as George Gershwin and His
Lovely Wife Ira are as a songwriting team, I
think they really let the side down in "Let's Call
the Whole Thing Off." Nobody, and I mean
no-BAHD-y, says "po-TAH-toe" or "ersters", do
they? Certainly nobody in this movie does.
--
Michael West
Melbourne, Australia
Dylan Nicholson
news:WfHDc.67916$sj4....@news-server.bigpond.net.au...
>
> Also, as terrific as George Gershwin and His
> Lovely Wife Ira are as a songwriting team,
Wife? You jest, I assume...
Harvey Van Sickle
More than just assume, methinks: it's a fairly well-known joke (hence
Michael's capitalising).
--
Cheers, Harvey
Ottawa/Toronto/Edmonton for 30 years;
Southern England for the past 21 years.
(for e-mail, change harvey to whhvs)
Areff
> Also, as terrific as George Gershwin and His
> Lovely Wife Ira are as a songwriting team, I
> think they really let the side down in "Let's Call
> the Whole Thing Off." Nobody, and I mean
> no-BAHD-y, says "po-TAH-toe" or "ersters", do
> they? Certainly nobody in this movie does.
I think there *were* people who said "ersters", or something similar. For
one thing, it might approximate a then-still-existing dialectal
pronunciation of 'oyster' by some New York City speakers. For two thing,
I've read that "erster" is also a feature of the Baltimore, Md. dialect,
or was. Maybe Joe Manfre knows more from that. Don't some Texans say
"erl" for "oil", reputedly?
Ed Norton (NTBCW Ed Horton), played by Art Carney, pronounced "Oyster Bay"
(which calls to mind another Tin Pan Alley songwriter, Cole Porter from
Coop's native Indiana) as "Erster Bay" on at least one episode of _The
Honeymooners_.
Since the exaggeratedly (?) comical rendition of a New York accent was
then in vogue, and since the Gershwin Bros. themselves had grown up in
Brooklyn (Fourth Largest City in America) (then Third?), my guess is that
"ersters" in "Let's Call the Whole Thing Off" is specifically a tip of the
hat to New York (LCIA).
--
Donna Richoux
> Michael West wrote:
> > Also, as terrific as George Gershwin and His
> > Lovely Wife Ira are as a songwriting team, I
> > think they really let the side down in "Let's Call
> > the Whole Thing Off." Nobody, and I mean
> > no-BAHD-y, says "po-TAH-toe" or "ersters", do
> > they? Certainly nobody in this movie does.
>
> I think there *were* people who said "ersters", or something similar. For
> one thing, it might approximate a then-still-existing dialectal
> pronunciation of 'oyster' by some New York City speakers. For two thing,
> I've read that "erster" is also a feature of the Baltimore, Md. dialect,
> or was. Maybe Joe Manfre knows more from that. Don't some Texans say
> "erl" for "oil", reputedly?
>
The thing to remember in all those oi/er discussions is that *it's not a
rhotic R*. It's like that way of saying "world" that comes out a lot
like "weld." Or something like the short "oo" in "book," or something.
Think how the Brits say "First things first." "Fust things fust," sort
of, but not really. I'm not saying I know what the sound *is*, but I
know what it *isn't*.
Didn't we just see this R the other day, the UK crew discussing whether
"bodega" was bodeeger or boddegger or something, and us US types were
shouting, "Lose the R!" Non-rhotic people just shouldn't use Rs in
representing vowel sounds, but somehow it's the best they can do at the
time.
--
Best -- Donna Richoux
Bob Cunningham
<mbw...@bigpond.com> said:
[...]
> Nobody, and I mean
> no-BAHD-y, says "po-TAH-toe" or "ersters"
If somebody wanted to say "noBAHDy" or "poTAHtoe", how
should they pronounce them?
Michael West
It's a very old musician's gag, and, being
a very old musician, I'm entitled.
Michael West
> Areff <m...@privacy.net> wrote:
>> I think there *were* people who said "ersters", or something similar. For
>> one thing, it might approximate a then-still-existing dialectal
>> pronunciation of 'oyster' by some New York City speakers. For two thing,
>> I've read that "erster" is also a feature of the Baltimore, Md. dialect,
>> or was. Maybe Joe Manfre knows more from that. Don't some Texans say
>> "erl" for "oil", reputedly?
>>
> The thing to remember in all those oi/er discussions is that *it's not a
> rhotic R*.
"Ersters" is definitely rhoticized in the Fred and Ginger version.
Bob Cunningham
Richoux) said:
[in a discussion in which the famous "oi"-"er" relationship
was mentioned]
[...]
> The thing to remember in all those oi/er discussions is that
> *it's not a rhotic R*.
This (not that) has been said more than once before, but it
needs repeating now and then:
The pop linguistics literature reminds us that it's a
fallacy to think anyone says "foist" for "first" and "first"
for "foist". Actually, they tell us, the people about whom
that is thought say "foist" and "first" with the *same*
sound, but it sounds different to us in the two words
because of the different-than-expected effect. The sound is
neither of the ones many people use for "oi" and "er".
For what it's worth, it's not unusual among chess players to
hear one-time World Chess Champion Euwe's name pronounced
['@rv@] ("Erva"). In Russian chess literature, with Russian
orthography being pretty much phonetic, Euwe's name is
spelled to suggest the pronunciation ['eIv@] ("Ayva").
Euwe was from The Netherlands. Maybe someone with a
knowledge of Dutch could tell us how he would have
pronounced his name.
Jonathan Miller
news:WfHDc.67916$sj4....@news-server.bigpond.net.au...
I dunno. I went to grad school with a guy who spoke perfectly normal
English, but his father went to the terlet and changed the earl in his car.
I suspect he avoided ersters, but he may have eaten them.
Jon Miller
John Varela
> Nobody, and I mean
> no-BAHD-y, says "po-TAH-toe" or "ersters", do
> they?
My wife says that her mother, born in 1903, who lived her whole life in
Brookport, IL with a few years in Cape Girardeau, MO, said "ersters". She
could only with some effort make the "oy" sound. Her ancestors came from
England circa 1870.
"Ersters" is also a classic New Orleans "yat" pronunciation. See
http://www.gumbopages.com/yatspeak.html#whereyat
--
John Varela
(Trade "OLD" lamps for "NEW" for email.)
I apologize for munging the address but the spam was too much.
Aaron J. Dinkin
With whatever vowel of their dialect they think is best expressed by
"AH", of course. Probably the same one as they have in the word "blah".
-Aaron J. Dinkin
Dr. Whom
R J Valentine
...
} I think there *were* people who said "ersters", or something similar. For
} one thing, it might approximate a then-still-existing dialectal
} pronunciation of 'oyster' by some New York City speakers. For two thing,
} I've read that "erster" is also a feature of the Baltimore, Md. dialect,
} or was. Maybe Joe Manfre knows more from that.
Guy I know grew up on the Eastern Shore pronounced them "orsters" (though
it may not have been quite that far from "oysters").
--
R. J. Valentine <mailto:r...@smart.net>
Areff
You have the _Homicide: Life on the Street_ DVD collection AIR, so you
could check that episode where what's her name goes back home to the
Eastern Shore, and her brother says something like "I'm an *oysterman*"
but I don't remember exactly how he says it. What's her name had a weird
accent but I don't know if it was in actuality a Maryland one.
The "orster" pronunciation makes me think of that old boxer character on a
handful of _NYPD Blue_ episodes who had been Bobby Simone's childhood
mentor/substitute father, and whose form God (= SkittE 'god') takes in
that scene where Bobby dies. This guy is the one who taught Bobby all
about pigeons (Bobby's hobby, like that of Marlon Brando in _On the
Waterfront_), and he always refers to pigeons as "bords": "I taught you
your bords". Seemed to me like a sort of bad attempt at an authentic
palaeo-New York [bV"Idz], but maybe it was some other sort of accent
entirely.
--
mb
...
> Non-rhotic people just shouldn't use Rs in
> representing vowel sounds, but somehow it's the best they can do at the
> time.
Somehow I miss the logic in this. If they are non-rhotic then of
course the postvowelic R is a vowel, what else?
Michael West
If I read that non-rhotically, I think I may even
have hoid, er, heard something like that. Maybe
the problem wasn't with Ira Gershwin, but with
the sing-gers, who over-rhotacise it. (Which is
probably what Donna was saying earlier.)
I don't recall hearing Louis Armstrong say "oyster",
but he had that "er/oi" thing, so that "burgundy
brew" came out "bouigundy brew" when he sang
"You Go To My Head". I wonder if I can scare up
a Satchmo version of "Let's Do It, Let's Fall In Love"
with the line about oysters down in Oyster Bay.
Dylan Nicholson
news:668d6151.04062...@posting.google.com...
But many of your readers *are* rhotic and interpret -er or -ar or -or to
mean something quite different. -or can be made -aw, and -ar is the same
as -ah, but -er, -ur & -ir, as Donna mentioned, is difficult to transcribe
without using an 'r'. -uh is about the closest, but that doesn't convey the
length and looks a bit odd in words like 'wuhld' etc.
Of course, if everyone learned how to read and write IPA symbols fluently,
the problem would be nicely solved. But I can't see that happening any time
soon, especially when there's posters here that only read 7-bit ASCII.
Btw, how many people can read this: [w??ld]?
Dylan Nicholson
news:2k9r6bF...@uni-berlin.de...
>
> Btw, how many people can read this: [w??ld]?
>
Try this:
[w??ld]
Dylan Nicholson
w?:ld
Dylan Nicholson
> >
> Damn again. Um...
>
> w?:ld
>
Dylan Nicholson
> >
> Ok I give up. Basic to ASCII world.
>
world [wɜːld]
Please tell me someone can read that...
Donna Richoux
> "mb" <azyt...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
> news:668d6151.04062...@posting.google.com...
> > tr...@euronet.nl (Donna Richoux) wrote
> > ...
> > > Non-rhotic people just shouldn't use Rs in
> > > representing vowel sounds, but somehow it's the best they can do at the
> > > time.
> >
> > Somehow I miss the logic in this. If they are non-rhotic then of
> > course the postvowelic R is a vowel, what else?
>
> But many of your readers *are* rhotic and interpret -er or -ar or -or to
> mean something quite different.
Yes, that's what I meant. A nonrhotic person writing to another
nonrhotic person can write something like "bodeeger" and the second
person will interpret it in the way intended -- but the rhotic onlookers
cannot help but give their usual interpretation of "r" at the end, which
was *not* intended. Using Rs to convey certain vowel sounds is
misleading in an international forum.
>-or can be made -aw, and -ar is the same
> as -ah, but -er, -ur & -ir, as Donna mentioned, is difficult to transcribe
> without using an 'r'. -uh is about the closest, but that doesn't convey the
> length and looks a bit odd in words like 'wuhld' etc.
Besides which, the sound I'm talking about isn't a simple "uh," either.
Not like that of "cup" and "but" (leaving aside what the North of
England does to those).
> Of course, if everyone learned how to read and write IPA symbols fluently,
> the problem would be nicely solved. But I can't see that happening any time
> soon, especially when there's posters here that only read 7-bit ASCII.
You do know that an ASCII IPA system has been worked out, right? There
are various attempts to illustrate it at the AUE website. I've tried
learning from time to time, but always wind up stumbling over certain
symbolic representations.
> Btw, how many people can read this: [w??ld]?
I get two question marks - w??ld.
Donna Richoux
I guess I was too tired to waffle, and I suppose it's possible that the
Gershwins really did mean something as strongly rhotic as the US-Midwest
"first" and "worst." But given other discussions on this topic, I think
there's a strong chance they meant something they couldn't spell
otherwise, something like "oosters" with the short oo, and the singers
read it off the page rhotically.
I bet *Gershwin* doesn't even have an R in it, really. Those guys grew
up in Brooklyn. Don't you imagine they said something like Gooshwin or
Geushwin or Gushwin or however you want to represent a sound we don't
have a reliable spelling for?... ASCII IPA |U|, I suppose.
Dylan Nicholson
news:1gg33hg.1lujwg6eiqicoN%tr...@euronet.nl...
>
> You do know that an ASCII IPA system has been worked out, right? There
> are various attempts to illustrate it at the AUE website. I've tried
> learning from time to time, but always wind up stumbling over certain
> symbolic representations.
Exactly. The ASCII IPA "how-to" pages I've seen were just way too much to
pick up in 5 minutes (which is all that some of us can afford if they just
post & read occasionally). At least proper IPA can be cut & pasted from
various websites.
>
> > Btw, how many people can read this: [w??ld]?
>
> I get two question marks - w??ld.
>
I found the problem - you have to set at least 3 different options under OE
to get posting in UTF8 to work properly. Of course I don't know if this
helps anyone else, but that's what I was endeavoring to find out.
I was trying to post [wɜːld].
Dylan
Donna Richoux
Well, I got something this time, although one must always doubt whether
it's the same as the writer intended. The first after the w is a capital
E with an accent aigu (this direction:/). Then there's a sort of
backwards comma, then what looks like a capital E with a double dot over
it (umlaut, trema, diaeresis), and then a triangle (delta). Then ld.
Given long experience with symbol substitution, the odds are good that
whatever you see when you read *this* message will not be the same as
what I see now.
Dylan Nicholson
> Dylan Nicholson <wizo...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> > world [w??ld]
> >
> > Please tell me someone can read that...
>
> Well, I got something this time, although one must always doubt whether
> it's the same as the writer intended. The first after the w is a capital
> E with an accent aigu (this direction:/). Then there's a sort of
> backwards comma, then what looks like a capital E with a double dot over
> it (umlaut, trema, diaeresis), and then a triangle (delta). Then ld.
>
are there.
You'll still need a font that actually has those characters, but that's
another story.
I guess one day support for universal character codes will
be...well...universal...
Bob Cunningham
<din...@babel.ling.upenn.edu> said:
> On Sun, 27 Jun 2004 23:22:11 GMT, Bob Cunningham <exw...@earthlink.net> wrote:
> > On Sun, 27 Jun 2004 21:47:34 GMT, "Michael West"
> ><mbw...@bigpond.com> said:
> > [...]
> >> Nobody, and I mean no-BAHD-y, says "po-TAH-toe" or "ersters"
> > If somebody wanted to say "noBAHDy" or "poTAHtoe", how
> > should they pronounce them?
> With whatever vowel of their dialect they think is best expressed by
> "AH", of course.
Yes, as a communication of pronunciation "AH" is useless.
Michael West
It's not as bad as that. Many, if not most people,
will recognize that "ah" as the "father" vowel.
Knowing the song will help a bit, too. If you don't
know the song, then the issue becomes meaningless
anyway.
Bob Cunningham
Richoux) said:
[...]
> A nonrhotic person writing to another nonrhotic person can
> write something like "bodeeger" and the second person will
> interpret it in the way intended -- but the rhotic onlookers
> cannot help but give their usual interpretation of "r" at
> the end, which was *not* intended. Using Rs to convey
> certain vowel sounds is misleading in an international
> forum.
It certainly misled me for many years. I had long wondered
why in the world someone showing hesitation would say "Er".
Fairly late in life I learned that what was intended was a
sound something like "Uh", but more accurately the schwa,
[@].
[...]
> You do know that an ASCII IPA system has been worked out,
> right? There are various attempts to illustrate it at the
> AUE website. I've tried learning from time to time, but
> always wind up stumbling over certain symbolic
> representations.
Joe Manfre
> R J Valentine wrote:
>> On 27 Jun 2004 22:20:32 GMT Areff <m...@privacy.net> wrote: ...
>> > I think there *were* people who said "ersters", or something
>> > similar. For one thing, it might approximate a
>> > then-still-existing dialectal pronunciation of 'oyster' by some
>> > New York City speakers. For two thing, I've read that "erster"
>> > is also a feature of the Baltimore, Md. dialect, or was. Maybe
>> > Joe Manfre knows more from that.
>> ...
>>
>> Guy I know grew up on the Eastern Shore pronounced them "orsters"
>> (though it may not have been quite that far from "oysters").
Yeah, that was part of our stereotype of Eastern Shore watermen when I
was growing up in Baltimore. There were also attempts at imitating
"A-rabber" calls, something H.L. Mencken was trying to get down on
paper way back in the 1890s (IIRC, he had the pronunciation of
"oysters" as something like "awneeeeEEEEEEE") and were still current
as late as the 1980s, but that is one of those Baltimore things not
worth boring the rest of the world with.
> You have the _Homicide: Life on the Street_ DVD collection AIR, so
> you could check that episode where what's her name goes back home to
> the Eastern Shore, and her brother says something like "I'm an
> *oysterman*" but I don't remember exactly how he says it. What's
> her name had a weird accent but I don't know if it was in actuality
> a Maryland one.
Pshaw, as though anybody on that show even tried to talk like they
were from Maryland. Pshaw.
JM
Tony Cooper
<m.j.m...@bradford.ac.uk> wrote:
>"Jonathan Miller" <jonmi...@comcast.net> wrote in message
>news:jdmdnSfgytG...@comcast.com...
>
>>
>> I went to grad school with a guy who spoke perfectly normal
>> English, but his father went to the terlet and changed the earl in his
>car.
>>
>
>There's a song by Pure Prairie League (although written, IIRC, by Nick
>Gravenites) called "I'll Fix Your Flat Tire, Merle", which features the
>couplet:
>
>"I'll Fix Your Flat Tire, Merle,
>"Don't you get your sweet country-pickin' fingers all covered with [erle]"
>
>I always thought it was a strange and unlikely rhyme. Seems not.
>
>Mike M
>
I've never heard "erle" for oil, but "orl" is common in Indiana. It's
not an Indiana thing, though. One of my best friends said "orl", but
others in our group didn't. We all grew up within a five-mile radius.
Bob Cunningham
<mbw...@bigpond.com> said:
> Bob Cunningham wrote:
> > On Mon, 28 Jun 2004 02:09:01 +0000 (UTC), "Aaron J. Dinkin"
> > <din...@babel.ling.upenn.edu> said:
> >> On Sun, 27 Jun 2004 23:22:11 GMT, Bob Cunningham <exw...@earthlink.net> wrote:
> >>> On Sun, 27 Jun 2004 21:47:34 GMT, "Michael West"
> >>> <mbw...@bigpond.com> said:
> >>> [...]
> >>>> Nobody, and I mean no-BAHD-y, says "po-TAH-toe" or "ersters"
> >>> If somebody wanted to say "noBAHDy" or "poTAHtoe", how
> >>> should they pronounce them?
> >> With whatever vowel of their dialect they think is best expressed by
> >> "AH", of course.
> > Yes, as a communication of pronunciation "AH" is useless.
> It's not as bad as that. Many, if not most people,
> will recognize that "ah" as the "father" vowel.
But how many ways are there in the English-speaking world to
pronounce "father"?
I see the point of "poTAHtoe", but I don't see how "noBAHdy"
suggests anything but a normal careful pronunciation of
"nobody".
> Knowing the song will help a bit, too. If you don't
> know the song, then the issue becomes meaningless
> anyway.
I don't know what song you're referring to; my interest in
the thread started with seeing "AH" used to represent a
pronunciation. The issue concerning the use of "ah" to
convey pronunciation will never be meaningless to me.
But I respect the right of people to talk about
pronunciation using any notation they choose, so long as
they don't expect me to get any information out of what
they're saying.
Tony Cooper
<m.j.m...@bradford.ac.uk> wrote:
>"Jonathan Miller" <jonmi...@comcast.net> wrote in message
>news:jdmdnSfgytG...@comcast.com...
>
>>
>> I went to grad school with a guy who spoke perfectly normal
>> English, but his father went to the terlet and changed the earl in his
>car.
>>
>
>There's a song by Pure Prairie League (although written, IIRC, by Nick
>Gravenites) called "I'll Fix Your Flat Tire, Merle", which features the
>couplet:
>
>"I'll Fix Your Flat Tire, Merle,
>"Don't you get your sweet country-pickin' fingers all covered with [erle]"
>
Too bad there aren't Jewish country and western singers. The couplets
could be:
If you get a flat on the way to the bris,
I'll be glad to take care of this.
I'll change your flat, 'cause we need a mohel,
And don't want you covered with dirty oil.
When you take the baby from our Kvatter,
We don't want no cry "So, vat's de matter?"
No child should be taken from Elijah's chair,
By oily hands presented there.
Areff
> Michael West <mbw...@bigpond.com> wrote:
>
>> Donna Richoux wrote:
>> > Areff <m...@privacy.net> wrote:
>>
>> >> I think there *were* people who said "ersters", or something similar. For
>> >> one thing, it might approximate a then-still-existing dialectal
>> >> pronunciation of 'oyster' by some New York City speakers. For two thing,
>> >> I've read that "erster" is also a feature of the Baltimore, Md. dialect,
>> >> or was. Maybe Joe Manfre knows more from that. Don't some Texans say
>> >> "erl" for "oil", reputedly?
>> >>
>> > The thing to remember in all those oi/er discussions is that *it's not a
>> > rhotic R*.
>>
>> "Ersters" is definitely rhoticized in the Fred and Ginger version.
>
> I guess I was too tired to waffle, and I suppose it's possible that the
> Gershwins really did mean something as strongly rhotic as the US-Midwest
> "first" and "worst." But given other discussions on this topic, I think
> there's a strong chance they meant something they couldn't spell
> otherwise, something like "oosters" with the short oo, and the singers
> read it off the page rhotically.
I don't think so. By that time the er/oi merger was a characteristic of
the comical "Brooklynese". In reality this may have been an [V"I] merger.
[V"I] isn't the same as [V"]. But it's also likely that by this time New
York "non-rhotic" speakers were mostly rhotic-in-fact wrt stressed /R/ in
such words as "bird". Possibly many of those speakers were using the same
rhotic-in-fact vowel in "oi" words.
I've heard New York speakers do the "er for oy" thing, and you never know
how jocular they're being, but it's always a rhotic "er"; it's not [V":].
I do think that the New York rhotic-in-fact /R/, which may be similarly
realized in rhotic and "non-rhotic" accents (and thus encompasses my own
/R/ realization), is "less rhotic" than a Midwestern or Western /R/,
though I have no particular proof of this. Some /R/s sound sort of
harshly-rhotic to me -- this is something no New York speaker, however
rhotic, would produce.
> I bet *Gershwin* doesn't even have an R in it, really. Those guys grew
> up in Brooklyn. Don't you imagine they said something like Gooshwin or
> Geushwin or Gushwin or however you want to represent a sound we don't
> have a reliable spelling for?... ASCII IPA |U|, I suppose.
It's quite possible they grew up sayiing G[V"I]shwin. It's a lot less
likely they said G[V":]shwin a la Tom Kean ("puhfect together"). It's
more possible that they poshified their speech to say G[V":]shwin when
they up and moved to Manhattan, or Los Angeles, but it's also quite likely
that they were saying a non-harsh G[V"r]shwin.
Check out speech examples from that era. I think I hear New York-origin
speakers (I'm thinking of Humphrey Bogart, say, who had an
upper-middle-class background) using a [V"I] that sounds like it's almost
hitting [V"r] but not quite. Certainly these speakers didn't say "bird"
as "burrrrrrrd" the way many Midwesterners and Westerners might have done
(and I think that sort of pronunciation was, then, and maybe even now,
considered non-prestigious). There's such a thing as too much rhoticism,
even today.
So, in conclusion, I don't think there is one rhotic American "er".
--
Richard Sabey
> On Mon, 28 Jun 2004 00:41:25 +0200, tr...@euronet.nl (Donna
> Richoux) said:
> > The thing to remember in all those oi/er discussions is that
> > *it's not a rhotic R*.
>
> needs repeating now and then:
>
> The pop linguistics literature reminds us that it's a
> fallacy to think anyone says "foist" for "first" and "first"
> for "foist". <snip>
Nevertheless, couldn't "erster" for "oyster" have arisen by
hypercorrection?
> For what it's worth, it's not unusual among chess players to
> hear one-time World Chess Champion Euwe's name pronounced
> ['@rv@] ("Erva"). In Russian chess literature, with Russian
> orthography being pretty much phonetic, Euwe's name is
> spelled to suggest the pronunciation ['eIv@] ("Ayva").
>
> Euwe was from The Netherlands. Maybe someone with a
> knowledge of Dutch could tell us how he would have
> pronounced his name.
"erwe" as in Derwent, says the *second* edition of The Oxford
Companion to Chess (Hooper & Whyld) (the first edition
incorrectly says ervour as in fervour).
As a matter of interest, how do you pronounce, and spell,
the surname of the Russian chess-player whose spell as
ches world champion from 1927 to 1946 was interrupted by
Euwe's from 1935 to 1937?
--
Richard Sabey Visit the r.p.crosswords competition website
cryptic_fan at hotmail.com http://www.rsabey.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/rpc/
Someone is sending German-language spam with a forged From: line,
purporting to be from me. Please be informed: I spam nobody.
Richard Sabey
> The thing to remember in all those oi/er discussions is that *it's not a
> like "weld." Or something like the short "oo" in "book," or something.
> Think how the Brits say "First things first." "Fust things fust," sort
> of, but not really.
Indeed not really.
> I'm not saying I know what the sound *is*, but I
> know what it *isn't*.
>
> <snip> Non-rhotic people just shouldn't use Rs in
> representing vowel sounds, but somehow it's the best they can do at the
> time.
I try to cater for you rhotic folks when I do this. However, you have
to admit that there's a difficulty with representing non-rhotic "er".
There just isn't a canonical spelling of that sound in English orthography.
ObAUE Find a couple of English words which are homophones in a
non-rhotic accent, but which people with rhotic accents pronounce,
one with a rhotic "er", the other with a non-rhotic "er".
Harvey Van Sickle
> tr...@euronet.nl (Donna Richoux) wrote in message
> news:<1gg2ecb.6d1j47bxdxl1N%tr...@euronet.nl>...
-snip-
>> <snip> Non-rhotic people just shouldn't use Rs in
>> representing vowel sounds, but somehow it's the best they can do
>> at the time.
>
> I try to cater for you rhotic folks when I do this. However, you
> have to admit that there's a difficulty with representing
> non-rhotic "er". There just isn't a canonical spelling of that
> sound in English orthography.
That's very true, but deciding to use a consonant to represent a vowel
-- to adopt a spelling which, to a rhotic person, is *guaranteed* to
misrepresent the sound -- has always struck me as perverse.
--
Cheers, Harvey
Ottawa/Toronto/Edmonton for 30 years;
Southern England for the past 21 years.
(for e-mail, change harvey to whhvs)
Bob Cunningham
(Richard Sabey) said:
[...]
> As a matter of interest, how do you pronounce, and spell,
> the surname of the Russian chess-player whose spell as
> ches world champion from 1927 to 1946 was interrupted by
> Euwe's from 1935 to 1937?
Alekhine. I've mostly heard [&l'jE*in] (approximately
"alYEKeen"), where [*] stands for a sound that doesn't
exist in English and that I don't know how to represent in
ASCII IPA. It's sorta like an English "k", but with no
stop, and fairly heavily aspirated. I think some English
speakers simply make a "k" of it.
Aaron J. Dinkin
How's that? If I want you to use the vowel of your dialect that you think
is best expressed by "AH", most likely that that you use in the word
"blah", how can it be useless for me to write something like "poTAHtoe"
in order to accomplish that? What would you suggest I write?
You didn't comment on "ersters". Does that somehow fail to have a
disadvantage that "poTAHtoe" has?
-Aaron J. Dinkin
Dr. Whom
mUs1Ka
>
> ObAUE Find a couple of English words which are homophones in a
> non-rhotic accent, but which people with rhotic accents pronounce,
> one with a rhotic "er", the other with a non-rhotic "er".
Would farmer and karma work?
--
Ray
Raymond S. Wise
news:fdf1ff33.0406...@posting.google.com...
> Bob Cunningham <exw...@earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:<aslud0p7uaoqcmrts...@4ax.com>...
> > On Mon, 28 Jun 2004 00:41:25 +0200, tr...@euronet.nl (Donna
> > Richoux) said:
> > > The thing to remember in all those oi/er discussions is that
> > > *it's not a rhotic R*.
> >
> > This (not that) has been said more than once before, but it
> > needs repeating now and then:
> >
> > The pop linguistics literature reminds us that it's a
> > fallacy to think anyone says "foist" for "first" and "first"
> > for "foist". <snip>
>
> Nevertheless, couldn't "erster" for "oyster" have arisen by
> hypercorrection?
This I don't understand. What rule do you have in mind which might, when
misapplied, lead to "erster" from "oyster"?
--
Raymond S. Wise
Minneapolis, Minnesota USA
E-mail: mplsray @ yahoo . com
R H Draney
>
>Yes, as a communication of pronunciation "AH" is useless.
I wonder if any child has ever grown up thinking the doctor says "open your
mouth and say R"....r
Don A. Gilmore
> English, but his father went to the terlet and changed the earl in his
car.
I know what you mean. I have seen Archie Bunker (from the 1970's TV series
'All in the Family') say "terlet" for toilet. It seems to me that such a
phenomenon could occur when someone assumes that everyone else is
mispronouncing the word. For example, you could actually think the word was
properly "terlet" and that all the other New Yorkers around you were
mispronouncing it "toilet" (as could be likely with a Brooklyn accent).
I worked with a fellow a couple of years ago who was from Fulton, New York.
He pronounced the word "paper" as "pear-per". Now that's pretty wild.
Don
Kansas City
Sara Lorimer
> Too bad there aren't Jewish country and western singers.
<http://www.kinkyfriedman.com>
--
SML
http://pirate-women.com
Raymond S. Wise
news:cbpbb...@drn.newsguy.com...
For a long time, I took the "er" in British texts, used to represent a
hesitation sound, to be pronounced to rhyme with "myrrh." Just now I looked
it up in MWCD11 and that pronunciation is present under the entry for "er,"
but marked with an obelus, <÷>, meaning that it is a controversial
pronunciation. I was startled to find that MWCD11 contains no entry for
"uh," which I would take to be the standard spelling for the American
version of the hesitation sound. (MWCD11 has entries for "uh-huh," "uh-oh,"
and "uh-uh," but no entry for "uh" alone.) It just seems *wrong* to me to
represent the American /r/-less version of the hesitation sound with "er"!
Areff
> "Richard Sabey" <crypt...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
> news:fdf1ff33.0406...@posting.google.com...
>>
>> hypercorrection?
>
>
> This I don't understand. What rule do you have in mind which might, when
> misapplied, lead to "erster" from "oyster"?
You have a dialect where, say, "bird" is [bV"Id] and it starts to get
ridiculed (inaccurately represented as "boyd"). So the speakers think:
Aha, [V"I]-ish sounds are bad. Replace with [V"r]. So they hypercorrect.
Whether they say [oIst@] or [V"Ist@], they replace it with [V"rst@].
--
Areff
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'",
and how it is they know that the "pity/adorable sound" is "Awwwww" and not
"Ahhhhh". Do they perhaps have what might be called "Ghost CINCness"?
--
Aaron J. Dinkin
> Alekhine. I've mostly heard [&l'jE*in] (approximately
> "alYEKeen"), where [*] stands for a sound that doesn't
> exist in English and that I don't know how to represent in
> ASCII IPA. It's sorta like an English "k", but with no
> stop, and fairly heavily aspirated. I think some English
> speakers simply make a "k" of it.
From your description it looks like the symbol you want is [x]. Also I'm
reasonably certain that [x] is the Russian sound whose standard transcription
is <kh>.
Aaron J. Dinkin
> "Richard Sabey" <crypt...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
> news:fdf1ff33.0406...@posting.google.com...
>
>> Nevertheless, couldn't "erster" for "oyster" have arisen by
>> hypercorrection?
>
> This I don't understand. What rule do you have in mind which might, when
> misapplied, lead to "erster" from "oyster"?
I think what Richard is referring to is as follows: Standard /R/ and /OI/ both
become [V"I] in this dialect. A speaker who is trying to sound more standard
has learned to replace [V"I] with [R], but hasn't learned that this is
appropriate in some words and not in others. So the misapplied rule is that
[V"I] in this dialect corresponds to standard [R].
Raymond S. Wise
news:2kaup6...@uni-berlin.de...
I see. I saw it differently. Using [V] for the vowel in "but," [@] for the
vowel in "bird," [Oi] for the vowel in "toy": From what I had read, the
sound [VI] represented a merger of [@r] and [Oi]. People outside of the
[VI]-dialect would mishear the diphthong, thinking that they heard [Oi]
where they would say [@r] and [@r] where they would say [Oi]. They would
represent this in phonetic spelling: "erster" for the [VI]-speaker's version
of "oyster" and "boyd" for the [VI]-speakers version of "bird." So a
misunderstanding is involved, rather than a hypercorrection.
A pseudo-accent in which [Oi] became [@r] and [@r] became [Oi] followed,
used by actors and comedians to represent the accent in question. So I have
to wonder, are there indeed people who say [@rst@r] as their native
pronunciation? Are there any [@r]-words which are now pronounced [Oi] in
someone's native pronunciation? Or do these happen only in the comic
pronunciation, or some variation of same, of which Archie Bunker's would
presumably be an example?
Areff
>> ridiculed (inaccurately represented as "boyd"). So the speakers think:
>> Aha, [V"I]-ish sounds are bad. Replace with [V"r]. So they hypercorrect.
>> Whether they say [oIst@] or [V"Ist@], they replace it with [V"rst@].
>
>
> I see. I saw it differently. Using [V] for the vowel in "but," [@] for the
> vowel in "bird," [Oi] for the vowel in "toy": From what I had read, the
> sound [VI] represented a merger of [@r] and [Oi].
Oh no, certainly not!
> People outside of the
> [VI]-dialect would mishear the diphthong, thinking that they heard [Oi]
> where they would say [@r] and [@r] where they would say [Oi]. They would
> represent this in phonetic spelling: "erster" for the [VI]-speaker's version
> of "oyster" and "boyd" for the [VI]-speakers version of "bird." So a
> misunderstanding is involved, rather than a hypercorrection.
>
> A pseudo-accent in which [Oi] became [@r] and [@r] became [Oi] followed,
> used by actors and comedians to represent the accent in question. So I have
> to wonder, are there indeed people who say [@rst@r] as their native
> pronunciation?
I'm honestly not sure. Lots of older New York speakers use such
pronunciations sometimes but I think it's usually meant to be jocular.
They're lampooning the old lampooning. It's like Ali G., aight?
> Are there any [@r]-words which are now pronounced [Oi] in
> someone's native pronunciation? Or do these happen only in the comic
> pronunciation, or some variation of same, of which Archie Bunker's would
> presumably be an example?
No one ever naturally used [OI]. Lots of people did (and some still do)
use [V"I] naturally. Archie Bunker used [V"I], not [OI] -- Carroll
O'Connor's accent on that show was, I thought, comically exaggerated, but
otherwise realistic in a way that, say, your typical 1940s-era "Brooklyn"
accent wasn't (think of Bugs Bunny, say).
--
Martin Ambuhl
> "Dylan Nicholson" <wizo...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
> news:2k9rflF...@uni-berlin.de...
>
>>Ok I give up. Basic to ASCII world.
>>
>
> Except one last time...
>
> world [wɜːld]
>
> Please tell me someone can read that...
>
I can. I'm glad you figured out how to turn on UTF-8.
Bob Cunningham
<din...@babel.ling.upenn.edu> said:
[...]
> If I want you to use the vowel of your dialect that
> you think is best expressed by "AH", most likely that
> that you use in the word "blah", how can it be useless
> for me to write something like "poTAHtoe" in order to
> accomplish that? What would you suggest I write?
Before I made a suggestion, I would want to be persuaded
that there was some good reason for you to want me to use a
vowel when you don't know what that vowel is.
Telling me you want me to use the vowel of "blah" is the
same as telling me you want me to use the vowel I would use
in "saw", "ah", "tot", "tart", and "taught".
As I've said before, though, I see some sense in writing
"poTAHtoe", because that suggests a pronunciation that may
be different from the ordinary. My problem was with
"noBAHdy", which doesn't suggest to me any pronunciation
different from what would be suggested by "noBAWdy" or
"nobody".
Bob Cunningham
[x] is the horrible noise that Germans make when they
pronounce certain words, and it's the "ch" in Scottish
"loch". It's definitely not the pleasant, gargle-free sound
that's transliterated from Russian as "kh".
Bob Cunningham
[...]
> 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.
> Do they perhaps have what might be called "Ghost CINCness"?
Of course not. Spelling is one thing; pronunciation is
another.
Don A. Gilmore
> > 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.
Don
Kansas City
Richard Sabey
> "Richard Sabey" wrote in message
> news:fdf1ff33.0406...@posting.google.com...
> > Nevertheless, couldn't "erster" for "oyster" have arisen by
> > hypercorrection?
> This I don't understand. What rule do you have in mind which might, when
> misapplied, lead to "erster" from "oyster"?
You know that stereotype of the New York accent? Toity toid 'n'
toid, etc.? So if a speaker with such an accent misapplies a
rule that his speaker's "oy" represents the "er" sound in an accent
he is trying to adopt, we might get "erster" for "oyster".
ISTR that NYC's Boyd Ave. would sometimes be called Bird Ave. by
people doing this.
Richard Sabey
The initial [f] and [k] stop 'em being homophones (regardless of
rhoticity). Calmer and karma is an interesting variant, but again
it's not what I had in mind.
I was thinking of a non-rhotic "er", not a schwa. In the stressed
syllable of the word.
Areff
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.
--
Nantko Schanssema
>Euwe was from The Netherlands. Maybe someone with a
>knowledge of Dutch could tell us how he would have
>pronounced his name.
The German word 'Loewe' (lion) rhymes with the Dutch pronuciation of
GM Euwe's name, if that's any help.
If you know French: the 'eu' in the name of the river Meuse has about
the same sound as 'eu' in Euwe.
regards,
Nantko
--
Hanlon's Razor: Never attribute to malice that which is adequately
explained by stupidity.
Pat Durkin
"Joe Manfre" <man...@world.std.com> wrote in message
news:slrncdvvpr....@shell01-g.TheWorld.com...
> Areff (m...@privacy.net) wrote:
> > R J Valentine wrote:
> >> On 27 Jun 2004 22:20:32 GMT Areff <m...@privacy.net> wrote: ...
> >> > I think there *were* people who said "ersters", or something
> >> > similar. For one thing, it might approximate a
> >> > then-still-existing dialectal pronunciation of 'oyster' by some
> >> > New York City speakers. For two thing, I've read that "erster"
> >> > is also a feature of the Baltimore, Md. dialect, or was. Maybe
> >> > Joe Manfre knows more from that.
> >> ...
> >>
> >> Guy I know grew up on the Eastern Shore pronounced them "orsters"
> >> (though it may not have been quite that far from "oysters").
>
> Yeah, that was part of our stereotype of Eastern Shore watermen when I
> was growing up in Baltimore. There were also attempts at imitating
> "A-rabber" calls, something H.L. Mencken was trying to get down on
> paper way back in the 1890s (IIRC, he had the pronunciation of
> "oysters" as something like "awneeeeEEEEEEE") and were still current
> as late as the 1980s, but that is one of those Baltimore things not
> worth boring the rest of the world with.
>
>
> > You have the _Homicide: Life on the Street_ DVD collection AIR, so
> > you could check that episode where what's her name goes back home to
> > the Eastern Shore, and her brother says something like "I'm an
> > *oysterman*" but I don't remember exactly how he says it. What's
> > her name had a weird accent but I don't know if it was in actuality
> > a Maryland one.
>
> Pshaw, as though anybody on that show even tried to talk like they
> were from Maryland. Pshaw.
The gal actually did try. I got the impression she might have been from the
"Eastern Shore". Anyway, she said "Ballmer or Bawlmer", which I understand
to be some attempt to approximate the Baltimore version of the town's name.
Brian Wickham
wrote:
>Michael West <mbw...@bigpond.com> wrote:
>>
>> "Ersters" is definitely rhoticized in the Fred and Ginger version.
>
>I guess I was too tired to waffle, and I suppose it's possible that the
>Gershwins really did mean something as strongly rhotic as the US-Midwest
>"first" and "worst." But given other discussions on this topic, I think
>there's a strong chance they meant something they couldn't spell
>otherwise, something like "oosters" with the short oo, and the singers
>read it off the page rhotically.
>
Jonathan Schwartz (the son of the songwriter Arthur Schwartz) tells a
story about Ira Gershwin and this song. It seems the sheet music
appeared in London well before the movie and the singers that picked
up the song early didn't know that the intent was to pronounce each
item in two different ways. Ira shows up and hears the song being
sung with each item being pronounced the same way, as in "You say
po-tay-to and I say po-tay-to"
Brian Wickham
Brian Wickham
<tony_co...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>>
>I've never heard "erle" for oil, but "orl" is common in Indiana. It's
>not an Indiana thing, though. One of my best friends said "orl", but
>others in our group didn't. We all grew up within a five-mile radius.
>
I've heard "erle" for "oil" but mostly as a joke, as in "I'll have him
berled in erle". I have also heard your Indiana "orl". The one I
hear the most now is from the Southwest (I presume) and turns oil into
two syllables, "oh'-ill". George W. Bush pronounces it that way.
Brian Wickham
Ben Zimmer
>
> Jonathan Schwartz (the son of the songwriter Arthur Schwartz) tells a
> story about Ira Gershwin and this song. It seems the sheet music
> appeared in London well before the movie and the singers that picked
> up the song early didn't know that the intent was to pronounce each
> item in two different ways. Ira shows up and hears the song being
> sung with each item being pronounced the same way, as in "You say
> po-tay-to and I say po-tay-to"
Hmm, so Christopher Walken and the SNL writers didn't come up with that
one on their own?
Ben Zimmer
Are there any non-rhotic accents that homophonize "word"/"wood" or
"whirl"/"wool"? I think those would be [wV":d]/[wUd] and [wV":l]/[wUl]
for most BrE non-rhotics. In such an accent, [V":] only appears in
words with stressed "er", so I don't believe homophones with non-r words
would be possible.
Ben Zimmer
>
> 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.
There's some CIC humor in a new commercial for IBM:
http://www.adweek.com/aw/national/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000513589
In one commerical called "Off Meeting," employees
discuss where a particular project went wrong. Among
their excuses: "It was an off week," "An off quarter"
and "It got off to a bad start." When someone suggests
that a solution to the problem might be "off site,"
the boss replies, "That's awful."
(Or does the boss say, "That's offal"?)
R H Draney
I have a recording around here somewhere where it's Alan Bennett doing the song
that way in an audition....r
Donna Richoux
> Richard Sabey wrote:
> >
> > "mUs1Ka" <mUs...@exite.com> wrote
> > > Richard Sabey wrote:
> > > >
> > > > ObAUE Find a couple of English words which are homophones in a
> > > > non-rhotic accent, but which people with rhotic accents pronounce,
> > > > one with a rhotic "er", the other with a non-rhotic "er".
> > >
> > > Would farmer and karma work?
> >
> > The initial [f] and [k] stop 'em being homophones (regardless of
> > rhoticity). Calmer and karma is an interesting variant, but again
> > it's not what I had in mind.
> >
> > I was thinking of a non-rhotic "er", not a schwa. In the stressed
> > syllable of the word.
>
> Are there any non-rhotic accents that homophonize "word"/"wood" or
> "whirl"/"wool"? I think those would be [wV":d]/[wUd] and [wV":l]/[wUl]
> for most BrE non-rhotics. In such an accent, [V":] only appears in
> words with stressed "er", so I don't believe homophones with non-r words
> would be possible.
Do the British say "pearl" and "pull" alike? The sound that some rhotic
people put in "pull" might qualify for Mr. Sabey's "non-rhotic 'er'."
But I'm not the best one to speak to that, because I put nothing in
"pull" except the tiniest of schwas, as near to nothing as you can get:
pl. Like the second syllable of trample. We've discussed it here before;
"pull" is listed on one of the website pages to illustrate a vowel sound
and it just does not work for me. "Pull" and "bull" are different than
"gull," "hull," "skull," etc., for me. And they don't have the sound in
"book," either.
--
Best -- Donna Richoux
An American living in the Netherlands
Areff
> There's some CIC humor in a new commercial for IBM:
>
> http://www.adweek.com/aw/national/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000513589
>
> In one commerical called "Off Meeting," employees
> discuss where a particular project went wrong. Among
> their excuses: "It was an off week," "An off quarter"
> and "It got off to a bad start." When someone suggests
> that a solution to the problem might be "off site,"
> the boss replies, "That's awful."
>
> (Or does the boss say, "That's offal"?)
Whoa. Zimms, in all CINC AmE, SFAIK, "off" has the "caught" vowel!
(No?) Unless I'm wrong, the joke should work for both CIC and CINC
Americans. BrE appear to be another story; only the most old-fashionedly
posh say "off" as "orf", FWIG.
--
Dylan Nicholson
news:1gg44p5.1sf0z641lhh7jhN%tr...@euronet.nl...
>
> But I'm not the best one to speak to that, because I put nothing in
> "pull" except the tiniest of schwas, as near to nothing as you can get:
> pl. Like the second syllable of trample. We've discussed it here before;
> "pull" is listed on one of the website pages to illustrate a vowel sound
> and it just does not work for me. "Pull" and "bull" are different than
> "gull," "hull," "skull," etc., for me. And they don't have the sound in
> "book," either.
>
It's most definitely not the same as pearl, or gull. In fact it's hard to
imagine an accent in which pull and gull would rhyme, although little
surprises me wrt accents these days.
If I ever find a word that uses the non-rhotic -er vowel that is spelled
without an r, I'll let you know.
Btw, when you rhotists "um" and "er", do you "er" rhotically?
Dylan
Martin Ambuhl
> [x] is the horrible noise that Germans make when they
> pronounce certain words, and it's the "ch" in Scottish
> "loch". It's definitely not the pleasant, gargle-free sound
> that's transliterated from Russian as "kh".
The Russian letter that looks like <x> comes in both a hard /x/ and soft
/x;/ flavor.
Dylan Nicholson
news:40E083CA...@midway.uchicago.edu...
<snip>
> and "It got off to a bad start." When someone suggests
> that a solution to the problem might be "off site,"
> the boss replies, "That's awful."
>
> (Or does the boss say, "That's offal"?)
I gather they don't intend to show that ad in too many other
English-speaking countries.
I suppose they could do a 'non-rhotic' version, which had lots of "it could
be this, OR this, OR that, OR...etc. etc."
To which the boss says "That's orful".
Harvey Van Sickle
-snip-
> Btw, when you rhotists "um" and "er", do you "er" rhotically?
Er...yes.
But this rhotist, at least, has two entirely different "um/er"s
available to him.
The "non-rhotic" version is something like "um..euh", whilst the rhotic
one is "um..er". (I've used both, which is why I'd never try rendering
the first as "er".)
You non-rhotic guys are *so* limited in your um/er vocabulary....
--
Cheers, Harvey
Ottawa/Toronto/Edmonton for 30 years;
Southern England for the past 21 years.
(for e-mail, change harvey to whhvs)
Bob Cunningham
Yes.
> If you do, you are mispronouncing one or both of them.
That's absurd. I could as well -- and equally absurdly --
say that if you pronounce them differently, you are
mispronouncing one of them.
Dylan Nicholson
>
> I was thinking of a non-rhotic "er", not a schwa. In the stressed
> syllable of the word.
Interestingly, for me at least, it's basically the same sound, just that
the -er is sustained longer.
Bob Cunningham
<nan...@xs4all.nl> said:
> Bob Cunningham <exw...@earthlink.net>:
> >Euwe was from The Netherlands. Maybe someone with a
> >knowledge of Dutch could tell us how he would have
> >pronounced his name.
> The German word 'Loewe' (lion) rhymes with the Dutch pronuciation of
> GM Euwe's name, if that's any help.
It's not, but thanks anyway.
> If you know French: the 'eu' in the name of the river Meuse has about
> the same sound as 'eu' in Euwe.
I don't know French, but -- again -- thanks anyway.
Skitt
> "Don A. Gilmore" said:
>> "Bob Cunningham" wrote:
>>>> 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".
>
> Yes.
>
>> If you do, you are mispronouncing one or both of them.
>
> That's absurd. I could as well -- and equally absurdly --
> say that if you pronounce them differently, you are
> mispronouncing one of them.
What I would say is that you, Bob, are not speaking American Broadcast
English, or whatever it is called that you hear on network TV news. Should
I record something like "Don wasn't done until dawn" to show the difference?
--
Skitt (in Hayward, California)
www.geocities.com/opus731/
Michael West
> On Mon, 28 Jun 2004 09:59:29 +0200, tr...@euronet.nl (Donna
> Richoux) said:
>
> [...]
>
>> A nonrhotic person writing to another nonrhotic person can
>> write something like "bodeeger" and the second person will
>> interpret it in the way intended -- but the rhotic onlookers
>> cannot help but give their usual interpretation of "r" at
>> the end, which was *not* intended. Using Rs to convey
>> certain vowel sounds is misleading in an international
>> forum.
>
> It certainly misled me for many years. I had long wondered
> why in the world someone showing hesitation would say "Er".
> Fairly late in life I learned that what was intended was a
> sound something like "Uh", but more accurately the schwa,
> [@].
I had the same confusion, and then one day I
met someone who actually said a quite distinct
(rhotic) "er" instead of "uh" when pausing for
thought. She spoke a southern Black American
dialect that had other traces of the oi/er
inversion.
--
Michael West
Melbourne, Australia
Michael West
> I don't know what song you're referring to; my interest in
> the thread started with seeing "AH" used to represent a
> pronunciation.
The familiar lyric is "You say tomato, I say tomato", etc.
My point is that while it is unexceptional to hear the "a"
vowel in "tomato" treated differently, I have never hear
a parallel variation for "potato", contrary to what the lyric
suggests.
Areff
> Bob Cunningham wrote:
>> That's absurd. I could as well -- and equally absurdly --
>> say that if you pronounce them differently, you are
>> mispronouncing one of them.
>
> What I would say is that you, Bob, are not speaking American Broadcast
> English, or whatever it is called that you hear on network TV news. Should
> I record something like "Don wasn't done until dawn" to show the difference?
Well, wait now. One of the foremost and luminariest figures in American
broadcast news is ABC's Peter Jennings, and he's quite CIC, though in a
watered-down Canadian sort of way. Isn't Tom Brokaw CIC?
But I agree that American Broadcast English, in the normative sense, is a
CINC accent. Indeed, it closely resembles the regional accent I call New
York Postwar Prestige Standard[TM] (PPS).
I don't think Bob's accent, without modifications, would be acceptable on
American broadcast news, but the fact that he's not a "performer
side-show" (PSS) act is to his credit.
--
Michael West
> I do think that the New York rhotic-in-fact /R/, which may be similarly
> realized in rhotic and "non-rhotic" accents (and thus encompasses my own
> /R/ realization), is "less rhotic" than a Midwestern or Western /R/,
> though I have no particular proof of this. Some /R/s sound sort of
> harshly-rhotic to me [...]
That's absolutely true, in my experience. Even before I
came, fairly late in life, to non-rhotic Australia, I found
many Cincinnati natives, especially, *extreme* in their
sounding of "r", both before and after a vowel.
Areff
There's at least one AmE accent I call "hyper-rhotic", but I haven't yet
been successful in pinning it down regionally. I thought it might be
Southern Californian, because Richard M. Nixon had rather remarkable r's,
even though Nixon had a rather studied sort of speech style. Also, one
celebrity who seems to come close to this sort of "hyper-rhoticism" that I
have in mind is actor Wilford Brimley, and apparently he grew up in
Santa Monica. OTOH, when I was living in Lake View, there was a CTA guy
who sort of managed the morning rush hour bus traffic at Belmont and Lake
Shore Drive, and he had the hyper-rhotic accent, and the chances of a
Southern Californian working for the CTA seem rather slim to me.
One of the earliest examples of the hyper-rhotic accent I can remember was
the accent of the guy on the Apex Tech trade school commercials on local
New York TV during the early 1980s.
Interestingly enough, Wilford, Apex Tech, and CTA Guy are (a) all
presumptively male, and (b) all have/had moustaches.
I can see a Cincinnati transplant working for the CTA. Speaking of
Cincinnati, didn't Nixon's parents emigrate from Ohio?
--
Michael West
>>> On Mon, 28 Jun 2004 00:41:25 +0200, tr...@euronet.nl (Donna
>>> Richoux) said:
>>>> The thing to remember in all those oi/er discussions is that
>>>> *it's not a rhotic R*.
>>>
>>> This (not that) has been said more than once before, but it
>>> needs repeating now and then:
>>>
>>> The pop linguistics literature reminds us that it's a
>>> fallacy to think anyone says "foist" for "first" and "first"
>>> for "foist". <snip>
>>
>> Nevertheless, couldn't "erster" for "oyster" have arisen by
>> hypercorrection?
>
>
> This I don't understand. What rule do you have in mind which might, when
> misapplied, lead to "erster" from "oyster"?
I've wondered, too, if "toity-toid street" speakers,
having been told by their betters that their
pronunciation is substandard, sometimes ended up
hypercorrecting *every* "oi" sound they encounter,
including the one in "oyster".
Nantko Schanssema
Ok, I understand. Here's a sound sample I just made:
<http://www.xs4all.nl/~nantko/euwe.mp3>
Aaron J. Dinkin
> On Mon, 28 Jun 2004 13:42:58 +0000 (UTC), "Aaron J. Dinkin"
><din...@babel.ling.upenn.edu> said:
>
>> If I want you to use the vowel of your dialect that
>> you think is best expressed by "AH", most likely that
>> that you use in the word "blah", how can it be useless
>> for me to write something like "poTAHtoe" in order to
>> accomplish that? What would you suggest I write?
>
> Before I made a suggestion, I would want to be persuaded
> that there was some good reason for you to want me to use a
> vowel when you don't know what that vowel is.
Because your dialect has a coherent system, consistent with itself, and -
given that I know it's a dialect of English - I can be pretty sure it has
at least one vowel in a particular class, and indicate it even if I
don't know exactly which vowel it is.
If I write a word in an ad-hoc pronunciation spelling (without further
specification), it's because I want you to pronounce it in a way that is
coherent and consistent with that system. I don't want you to say it with
the vowel that _I_ think is best expressed by "AH". That would sound out
of place in your speech, because it wouldn't bear the proper relationship
to the sounds of the other words that you utter.
> Telling me you want me to use the vowel of "blah" is the
> same as telling me you want me to use the vowel I would use
> in "saw", "ah", "tot", "tart", and "taught".
Exactly! That's what I'm telling you.
Moreover, it's the same as telling _anybody_ that I want them to use the
vowel they would use in "ah" and "tart", regardless of whether they would
also use them in the other words you listed.
> As I've said before, though, I see some sense in writing
> "poTAHtoe", because that suggests a pronunciation that may
> be different from the ordinary. My problem was with
> "noBAHdy", which doesn't suggest to me any pronunciation
> different from what would be suggested by "noBAWdy" or
> "nobody".
Really? I see at least two differences:
1) For me, "nobody" has more stress on the first syllable than on the
second; the pronunciation spelling indicates second-syllable stress.
2) The vowel I have in the second syllable of the word "nobody" is the
so-called short-u sound of "cut" or "mud"; the spellings "AH" and "AW"
don't indicate this vowel for me.
The best ad-hoc pronunciation spelling I can come up with for "nobody" is
"NObuddy".
-Aaron J. Dinkin
Dr. Whom
Donna Richoux
> For what it's worth, it's not unusual among chess players to
> hear one-time World Chess Champion Euwe's name pronounced
> ['@rv@] ("Erva"). In Russian chess literature, with Russian
> orthography being pretty much phonetic, Euwe's name is
> spelled to suggest the pronunciation ['eIv@] ("Ayva").
>
> Euwe was from The Netherlands. Maybe someone with a
> knowledge of Dutch could tell us how he would have
> pronounced his name.
I doublechecked with my daughter who is by far the better Dutch speaker
of the two of us.
When the W is part of UW, it does not have the usual English-V sound --
it functions more like an English W.
As for the sound of EU, well, you know how hard it is to try to describe
or match sounds that *do* exist in English, so how are we to succeed
with one that doesn't? It sounds to me something like a tight-lipped
"ow" or like an RP speaker saying "No" (neh-oo).
Putting it all together and Americanizing it: I should think that if
American plays referred to "Eh-oo-wuh," they'd have some chance of
being recognized by a Dutch person. *But* if the name has acqired a
standardized pronunciation in English (like Van Gogh) then you might as
well go with what your colleagues will recognize.
Dylan Nicholson
news:2kb3tb...@uni-berlin.de...
> Dylan Nicholson wrote:
> >
> > world [wɜːld]
> >
> > Please tell me someone can read that...
> >
> I can. I'm glad you figured out how to turn on UTF-8.
I was at the point of assuming OE simply didn't have proper support for it,
despite the myriad of dialog and menu options referring to it. Turns out it
works perfectly fine, once you've waded your way through the 3 dialogs, 4
submenus and 2 patch levels required to turn it on. (Perhaps I exaggerate a
little, but still...)
I am seriously interested in how many people here *can* read it. Like I
said elsewhere, UTF-8 support per se isn't enough, you need the fonts too.
They come standard with Office 2000 apparently, but that's probably not much
help to a large percentage of posters here.
Donna Richoux
> "Martin Ambuhl" <mam...@earthlink.net> wrote in message
> news:2kb3tb...@uni-berlin.de...
> > Dylan Nicholson wrote:
> > >
> > > world [wɜːld]
> > >
> > > Please tell me someone can read that...
> > >
> > I can. I'm glad you figured out how to turn on UTF-8.
>
> I was at the point of assuming OE simply didn't have proper support for it,
> despite the myriad of dialog and menu options referring to it. Turns out it
> works perfectly fine, once you've waded your way through the 3 dialogs, 4
> submenus and 2 patch levels required to turn it on. (Perhaps I exaggerate a
> little, but still...)
>
> I am seriously interested in how many people here *can* read it.
Well, you might describe what it is that you *hope* they see, so that
they will know if they have succeeded.
>Like I
> said elsewhere, UTF-8 support per se isn't enough, you need the fonts too.
> They come standard with Office 2000 apparently, but that's probably not much
> help to a large percentage of posters here.
--
Best -- Donna Richoux
Dylan Nicholson
>
> Well, you might describe what it is that you *hope* they see, so that
> they will know if they have succeeded.
>
It was copied & pasted from
http://www.wordreference.com/definition/world.htm, as what I assume is the
IPA for non-rhotic world [wɜːld]. If you have a unicode font installed on
your machine, you'll be able to read it from that link.
There's only 5 symbols between the [ and ]. The 2nd looks like a
back-to-front 3, and the 3rd like a sort of colon (although they're actually
wedges).
Raymond S. Wise
news:2kb7fu...@uni-berlin.de...> news:0mo0e0pig208k4b1v...@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
>
> Don
> Kansas City
Not so. There are speakers of standard dialects of English, including me (I
was raised in Central Illinois and have lived in Minneapolis for 30 years),
who pronounce "cot" identically to "caught" and "don" identically to "dawn."
See the AUE FAQ on the question at
http://alt-usage-english.org/excerpts/fxhowdoa.html
In this newsgroup, we usually distinguish the two groups by calling them
"CIC speakers" and "CINC speakers," where "CIC" means "Caught is cot" and
"CINC" means "Caught is not cot."
See
http://alt-usage-english.org/abbreviations.html
As for the particular example of the word pair "don"/"dawn," see the
Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary at www.m-w.com , which shows two
pronunciations for "don," the verb, and also for the name "Don"--in "Don
Juan" and "Don Quixote," one of which is the same as the pronunciation shown
for "dawn." Compare also the entries for "cot" and "caught."
--
Raymond S. Wise
Minneapolis, Minnesota USA
E-mail: mplsray @ yahoo . com
Bob Cunningham
> > Yes.
That's all to the good. I have no desire to speak in a way
that will make people think I'm from the East.
> Should I record something like "Don wasn't done until dawn"
> to show the difference?
Thanks, Skitt, but I'm quite familiar with the sounds. I
can pronounce "dawn" [dO:n] as well as anyone, but I don't
want to because it would make the people I normally
associate with think I was talking funny.
The "American Broadcast English" you mention is probably
based on narrowminded attitudes of Easterners. It would
probably be a good idea if they would try to learn more
about how Americans talk across the broad sweep of the
country.
I've told before in AUE about one of my ex-daughters-in-law
who moved from New Jersey to Santa Monica, California
sometime in her pre-teen years. She was dismayed to find
that the kids in school laughed at her because she talked
funny. She tells of practicing for months to replace her
New Jersey vowels with ones her schoolmates would find
acceptable.
I find it a little puzzling that in trying to convert from
saying [tO:k] to saying [tA:k] (for "talk") she thought she
had to open her mouth wide. Whatever she did, though, seems
to have worked well. Her speech sounds pretty normal now.
Dr Robin Bignall
wrote:
>Dylan Nicholson wrote:
>> "Dylan Nicholson" <wizo...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
>> news:2k9rflF...@uni-berlin.de...
>>
>>>Ok I give up. Basic to ASCII world.
>>>
>>
>> Except one last time...
>>
>> world [w??ld]
>>
>> Please tell me someone can read that...
>>
>I can. I'm glad you figured out how to turn on UTF-8.
As a matter of interest, how does one turn it on? In Windows somewhere? I
don't see any option in Agent. The only one of Dylan's postings that showed
special characters rather than question marks was in his post that was
quoted by Donna.
--
wrmst rgrds
Robin Bignall
Hertfordshire
England
Dr Robin Bignall
<wizo...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>"Donna Richoux" <tr...@euronet.nl> wrote in message
>news:1gg44p5.1sf0z641lhh7jhN%tr...@euronet.nl...
>>
>> But I'm not the best one to speak to that, because I put nothing in
>> "pull" except the tiniest of schwas, as near to nothing as you can get:
>> pl. Like the second syllable of trample. We've discussed it here before;
>> "pull" is listed on one of the website pages to illustrate a vowel sound
>> and it just does not work for me. "Pull" and "bull" are different than
>> "gull," "hull," "skull," etc., for me. And they don't have the sound in
>> "book," either.
>>
>Pull and book use the same vowel for me, AFAICT. Likewise "put".
>It's most definitely not the same as pearl, or gull. In fact it's hard to
>imagine an accent in which pull and gull would rhyme, although little
>surprises me wrt accents these days.
Pull, gull, book, put... All the same vowel in my Nottingham accent.
Pearl rhymes with girl.
Dr Robin Bignall
<bwickham@NO~SPAM.nyc.rr.com> wrote:
>On Mon, 28 Jun 2004 07:24:57 -0400, Tony Cooper
><tony_co...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>
>
>>>
>>I've never heard "erle" for oil, but "orl" is common in Indiana. It's
>>not an Indiana thing, though. One of my best friends said "orl", but
>>others in our group didn't. We all grew up within a five-mile radius.
>>
>
>I've heard "erle" for "oil" but mostly as a joke, as in "I'll have him
>berled in erle".
Precisely the sort of pronunciation Sellers as Clouseau would have given
it.
Dylan Nicholson
> Pull, gull, book, put... All the same vowel in my Nottingham accent.
I did have a slight suspicion there must be some northern-type UK accents
that might use the same vowel for pull and gull. Are all your 'u' vowels
short 'oo' type sounds then? Surely not 'um', or even 'hum'?
This would make stud/stood homophones presumably. Do you ever distinguish
long oo (school), short oo (book) and the 'oo' in room? (all 3 are subtly
different for me, although room is an odd one - the consonants seem to
affect the vowel a lot. It's almost a diphthong of sorts).
Michael West
> Pull and book use the same vowel for me, AFAICT.
Me too, but this reminds me that I knew
a native Chicagoan whose "pull" sounded
like "pool" to me.
> Btw, when you rhotists "um" and "er", do you "er" rhotically?
Some do, but it seems to be a small minority.
Frances Kemmish
As far as I can tell, sitting here mumbling (yes, same vowel) to myself,
pull, gull, cup, bus, stud, bum - all the same. Book might be a wee
bit shorter. School and room are definitely longer.
I come from a village fifteen miles north of where Robin grew up.
'Go' also has the same vowel as 'book' to people where I grew up; I am
not sure whether that is true of Nottingham dialects, too.
Fran
Dylan Nicholson
news:2kc1jf...@uni-berlin.de...
>
> As far as I can tell, sitting here mumbling (yes, same vowel) to myself,
> pull, gull, cup, bus, stud, bum - all the same.
What about um and hum?
Skitt
> As far as I can tell, sitting here mumbling (yes, same vowel) to
> myself, pull, gull, cup, bus, stud, bum - all the same.
For me, "pull" is the odd one out.
> Book might be a wee bit shorter. School and room are definitely
> longer.
Ah, those go along with the "pull", modified as you describe.