fricative voicing / done

[Wilson Gray]

I've heard "roo[vz]" a lot, along with "hoo[fs]," but I still go (I know a
guy whose surname is "Stilgoe") with "roo[fs]" and "hoo[vz]," as I was
taught. BTW, is the vowel [u] as in "too" or
[U] as in "took"? I use [u] in both forms, again as I was taught, though
I've heard these words with [U] so often in so many diffrerent locales that
I have to monitor my pronunciation, lest I slip unconsciously to the Dark
Side. They're getting to be like "eether" vs. "eyether" or "eeconomic" vs.
"eckonomic." "Yuh pays yuh money and yuh takes yuh cherce."

-Wilson

On 5/10/06, Daniel Ezra Johnson <johnson4 at babel.ling.upenn.edu> wrote:
>
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Daniel Ezra Johnson <johnson4 at BABEL.LING.UPENN.EDU>
> Subject:      fricative voicing / done
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> they used to tell us (massachusetts, 80's, upper-middle-class area) that
> "done" meant cooked, so you were supposed to say "i'm finished" unless you
> meant that you were ready to be eaten at table.
>
> but my impression (erroneous, apparently, given some of the posts here)
> was that everybody actually did say "i'm done".
>
> it is interesting how as children we totally reject certain prescriptivist
> nugget, accept others as valid without following them, and follow others.
>
> and fascinating if there's a north-south divide (off-list i've heard an
> east-west one proposed, too) on hou[s]es. i don't think the voiceless form
> was too common in my neck of the words [stet that typo] but heard it at
> college from another new englander.
>
> my subjective evaluation of hou[s]es is as firmly non-standard but not
> firmly lower-class. although i suppose it would fit into a lower-class nyc
> stereotype, if not a boston one.
>
> but it's part of that subset of forms from "other dialects" that i find
> myself saying more and more anymore. can wi[f]es be far behind? did i ever
> say roo[v]s?
>
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