saying "ah" for "awe"

[Tom Zurinskas]

>From: Paul Johnston <paul.johnston at WMICH.EDU>
>Reply-To: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>Subject: Re: saying "ah" for "awe"
>Date: Sun, 1 Oct 2006 11:01:40 -0400
>
>---------------------- Information from the mail header
>-----------------------
>Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>Poster:       Paul Johnston <paul.johnston at WMICH.EDU>
>Subject:      Re: saying "ah" for "awe"
>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>Dear Tom,
>As far as the distribution, the COT=CAUGHT merger is a phenomenon of
>vowel change that linguists have explored a lot.  It occurs in
>several areas:  (1) parts of Eastern New England; (2) Western
>Pennsylvania and adjoining areas; (3) most of the West--though in
>some cases, the vowels are just very close, not actually merged;  (4)
>some areas adjoining Canada, where the merger is usual; and (5) a
>growing tail of dialects running from Central Ohio through the center
>of the country connecting (3) and (2).  In (1), (3), most of (5), and
>sometimes  (4), it tends to be the COT vowel that survives, though
>(1)'s COT vowel sounds like a lot  of American's CAUGHT vowel.
>OK--people have been saying what you've said about confusing word
>meanings and so on for at least 400 years.  I know of grammarians in
>the early 17th century on how disgusting it was to pronounce tail and
>tale, or main and mane, or road and rowed, or no and know the same.
>(The spelling shows that they were once different, and they still are
>in a number of British dialects).  Yet we accept their merger today
>as Standard, and  learn their spelling individually,  because our
>phonics rules don't quite work here.  Same with knight and night,
>rights and rites, and so on.  No one confuses their meaning because
>these words are not spoken in isolation--they are in sentences, and
>these sentences in texts and conversations.  So we can determine the
>meaning by the words they are around--their context.  So, although it
>may make it harder for kids to learn to spell using phonics alone,
>our language still functions--and if there is confusion, you can
>always ask what was meant.
>
>Paul Johnston

Personnally, if language is given to change, I would prefer it to be more
phonetically consistent with spelling.  What you say is that we have no way
to influence this.  I think we have a way - our school systems.  The
dropping of phonics was a bad thing.  Now "phonemic awareness" is back.  A
good thing.

Tom z

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