laxing of high front vowel before /g/ and in quiche

Dale Coye Dalecoye at AOL.COM
Mon Oct 23 16:33:18 UTC 2000


Someone mentioned as a Pittsburghism the laxing of /i/ to /I/ (upper case i)
before /g/-- I noticed this feature in my some of my in-laws speech --Dayton
Ohio (SW Ohio) and wondered how widepsread it is-- is it all of Southern Ohio
over to Pittsburgh?-- so words like 'fatigue, league, intrigue' sound like
fatigg, ligg, intrigg.   It also affects the mid-front tense vowel, so
'bagel, plague' are 'beggel, plegg'-- and an isolated example is 'quiche'
which is 'kish'-- I don't think 'leash' is laxed, but maybe..   These are
people born c. 1925, but some of the next generation picked it up too.  So
anyone know if the younger generation is still doing it or how widespread it
ever was?

Dale Coye
The College of NJ



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