R r

[Rachel E. Shuttlesworth]

I heard this pronunciation from several of my BE-speaking middle school
teachers (probably in their 70s now), natives of Alabama.
Rachel

Wilson Gray wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Wilson Gray <wilson.gray at RCN.COM>
> Subject:      R r
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> As a child, I learned the name of the letter "R r" as [ar@]. (All of
> the other letters had the local version of their standard names.) This
> might be spelled "orra" (or "arra"?). I once heard the late Senator
> Edward Brooke (R) of Massachusetts, who was a native of Virginia,
> pronounce the call-letters of a radio station, WROR, as
> "dubya-orra-oh-orra." I've been wondering, given that a native Texan
> and a native Virginian both used this pronunciation, whether this usage
> is pan-Southern or whether the fact that we both used it was mere
> coincidence or, perhaps, a feature only of BE. How say ye, fellow
> Southrons?
>
> -Wilson Gray

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Rachel E. Shuttlesworth
CLIR Post-Doctoral Fellow
University of Alabama Libraries
Box 870266, Tuscaloosa, Alabama 35487-0266
Office: 205.348.4655/ Fax:205.348.8833
rachel.e.shuttlesworth at ua.edu