Cold Mountain

Stephanie Hysmith sh120888 at OHIO.EDU
Fri Nov 12 18:04:06 UTC 1999


I hadn't even considered the low back vowel as an option. I guess I was
thinking the broad A must be either [ae] as in Beverly's Addie or the front
central-leaning [a] that you use for I. My niece was adopted from Orange
County in Virginia. Her name is Ida Mae and she pronounces it [ad at meI]. (I
can't remember what you use for schwa-that's what the @ is to represent).
Could this be posturing on the part of the Charlestonian father to write
her name Ada and then pronounce it like you might also pronounce Ida? I've
run into situations like this when I substituted for the public schools in
southeastern Ohio. Children would correct my pronunciation of what seemed
to me a common name.

I've never heard Ada any way other than [ed@]. I found this passage
intriguing, because Frazier is so deliberate in his description. Thanks for
your input.

At 10:26 AM 11/12/99 -0600, you wrote:
>Beverly wrote:
>> Natalie, by 'ah' do you mean [a] or [ae]?  I interpreted '"broad" to mean
>> the low front vowel, as in "Addie" (perhaps a diminutive of Ada?).
>
>I meant low back -- the one that I can't make on my computer but that
>[a] is sometimes used for (though I think of [a] as the sound of my
>pronunciation of the pronoun I, not as the ah sound of father --
>that's the sound I'm talking about -- the one with the non-print little
>a symbol -- like "open your mouth and go ahhhh").
>   --Natalie Maynor (maynor at ra.msstate.edu)
>



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