entertaining dialect

[Herb Stahlke]

Dennis,

Actually, I'm a fine one to talk.  I'm from SE Michigan, the little town of Waltz, 7 m W of Flat Rock on the Wayne/Monroe county line, and I lived there in the forties and fifties.  My students here in Muncie, IN, find my speech funny, and when I explain some of the reasons to them they find it even moreso, except my phonetics students, who find it a burden.  My native area, and I don't know how large that is or if it's still true because I don't get back there much, phonemicizes Canadian Raising.  I contrast kind-R "sort" with kind-L "well-disposed, round-R (prep) with round-L (adj), hide-R (verb) with hide-L (noun), etc., and, in good MI fashion, my raised diphthongs start on a schwa and my lowered start on a tent.  Gives them fits when they have to transcribe narrowly.

I should mention that I live there before Northern Cities hit the area, and I went to a prep school in Milwaukee from 55-61 (it included jr. college), so I escaped Northern Cities Vowel Shift completely.

Herb

>>> preston at PILOT.MSU.EDU 03/01/00 11:00AM >>>
dInIs' talk in MI = funny (or worse)
dInIs' talk in Louisville = not like you used to, kinda funny

dInIs (who you damn guys got not only saying "guys" to refer to both sexes
but even third-personing his own self)

>Fess up, Dennis.  You just talk funny.
>
>Herb


Dennis R. Preston
Department of Linguistics and Languages
Michigan State University
East Lansing MI 48824-1027 USA
preston at pilot.msu.edu
Office: (517)353-0740
Fax: (517)432-2736