Preakness

[Peter A. McGraw]

I've never heard a local pronounce it, so the media are my only source, but
the only pronunciation I recall ever hearing is [prikn at s].

Peter Mc.

--On Friday, May 28, 2004 2:26 PM -0400 Damien Hall
<halldj at BABEL.LING.UPENN.EDU> wrote:

> As I'm not American, people should tell me if I am simply behind the
> times. But
> I wonder whether I have noticed an old sound-change very belatedly coming
> to completion.
>
> From my reading, the name of Preakness (NJ) is a member of the small
> class of words (eg *great*, *break*) which were not included in the
> sound-change whereby <ea> came to be pronounced [i:];  according to my
> reading, Preakness, NJ is pronounced [preiknIs].
>
> But, twice in the last two days, I've heard National Public Radio
> announcers pronounce it [prikn at s] ([@] = schwa).  Is this
> widely-attested?  Could we be witnessing a change in the normative
> pronunciation?
>
> If we are, I wonder how Leakey, Texas is now pronounced.  I've read that
> it's normatively [laeiki] ([ae] = single phoneme).
>
> Damien Hall
> University of Pennsylvania



*****************************************************************
Peter A. McGraw       Linfield College        McMinnville, Oregon
******************* pmcgraw at linfield.edu ************************