eggcorn

[Beverly Flanigan]

At 04:04 PM 5/12/2005, you wrote:
>fritz notes an apparent eggcorn:
>
> >>>
>  If you have any questions please fill free to ask away.
><<<
>
>I know I produce some speakos that look like that. (errors in automatic
>speech recognition)  I try to catch them.
>
>And Beverly contributes:
>
> >>>
>As I understand it, the Southern Shift essentially switches tense and lax
>rather than merging them.  So, keel > kill, and kill > keel.
><<<
>
>Truly?!
>
>mark by hand

I oversimplify.  Tensing of the lax high and mid front vowels and the high
back is common; hence 'poosh', 'feesh', and 'speycial' (and Rex's 'meyzure'
and 'pleysure').  These are South Midland/South; listen to Chuck Hagel and
even Charles Grassley.  They're spreading westward, I believe, so I'm not
surprised that a Utahn has them also, though younger people and uppity
college types might try to control them.  The laxing of tense vowels is
also SoMid/Southern, not just Pittsburgh and Philadelphia.  (Didn't Labov
say that Philly is really the northernmost Southern city?)  But the merging
of tense and lax (to lax) tends to be North Midland, if I recall Labov's
maps correctly.  (He doesn't always distinguish NoMid from SoMid, and there
is a blurring across the isogloss, I think most of us will agree.)