ah/ awe

[sagehen]

>>From: sagehen <sagehen at WESTELCOM.COM>
>
>>Tom, would you wipe out all dialectal differences in pursuit of this
>>pronounce-as-spelled campaign?  How would you deal, e.g., with the
>>diphthongal i with which most northerners pronounce /light, sight, might/,
>>&c?
>
>I'm not familiar with that dipthong.  In m-w.com those words above do not
>have vowels that are two-phthongs to me.
>
>As an ideal, dialectical differences are not good.  The purpose of speech is
>to communicate.  Any alterations that lessen this is not a good thing.   We
>don't have dialects when we write, why should we in this day and age have
>them when we talk.
>
>Tom Z
 ~~~~~~~~~~
" In m-w.com those words above do not  have vowels that are two-phthongs "
I am not familiar with m-w.com, but I'm guessing it employs the old " long,
short, broad," &c., designations, wherein /ai/ is long  i and  /ah/ is
broad  a. (?)

Since we seem, perhaps through a misreading of the map,  to have wandered
into a Hegelian landscape here, what happens when, inevitably, "m/ai/t"
meets "r/ah/t"?
Would you have some arbitrator to declare a new standard?  Would you
re-spell words with current spellings that are not reflected in the
ordinary speech of any of the many regions of the world in which English is
spoken as the primary language?

AM

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