ah/ awe

Paul Johnston paul.johnston at WMICH.EDU
Tue Oct 3 18:33:55 UTC 2006


The monophthongization of /aw/ doesn't seem to be in Waynesburg. PA
or Blacksville or Pentress, WV-- or rather, the isolative merger
doesn't.  /aw/ monophthongizes before /r/ as [ae:r], and might do
before /l/ as well (got to get my in-laws to talk about owls).  And
tower is not equal to tire=tar, as the second group of words has a
(very) back vowel.  But /aw/ is [aeU] or the like.  For /ai/, there's
a lot of variability.  I've heard [ai, Ai, aE, AE, a:] and actually
quite frequently [A:], where [A] is the low back unrounded vowel.
[a:] for /aw/ does show up in a number of Northern cities in rapid
speech and as  a minority form.  I've heard it from New Yorkers
(particularly), Chicagoans and Clevelanders, especially in out,
down.  But only as a minority form, and certainly not in citation
forms of words.

Paul Johnston
On Oct 3, 2006, at 12:51 PM, Beverly Flanigan wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Beverly Flanigan <flanigan at OHIO.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: ah/ awe
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> ---------
>
> Right--it's not here in my area, but I haven't checked out the
> Steubenville/Wheeling/Morgantown area.  We could ask Kirk Hazen
> when we see
> him at NWAV.
>
> At 11:19 PM 10/2/2006, you wrote:
>> Yeah but the interesting thing about Pittsburgh, as Doug noted, is
>> the
>> monophthongization of /aw/ which isn't spreading into either Ohio
>> or West
>> VA, right? The Atlas of North American English found it only in SW
>> PA with
>> any regularity.
>>
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: American Dialect Society on behalf of Beverly Flanigan
>> Sent: Mon 10/2/2006 9:54 PM
>> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>> Subject:      Re: ah/ awe
>>
>> Same thing in southeastern Ohio:  The vowel in 'Don' and 'dawn'
>> isn't quite
>> as rounded as my Northern 'saw' and 'bought', but it's definitely
>> not the
>> vowel in Northern 'Don'--as it is in central Ohio and westward.
>> So there's
>> a merger of ah/awe here too, but it's more raised and further back
>> than in
>> Columbus.
>>
>> At 12:49 AM 10/2/2006, you wrote:
>>> And just south of Pittsburgh, in Northern West Virginia and Greene
>>> County, PA, Don and Dawn come out with something like a Philadelphia
>>> dawn.  My mother-in-law's (male) cousin, from Waynesburg, PA, is
>>> "Dawnie" with quite a raised open o.
>>>
>>> Paul Johnaston
>>> On Oct 1, 2006, at 7:28 PM, Douglas G. Wilson wrote:
>>>
>>>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>>>> -----------------------
>>>> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>>>> Poster:       "Douglas G. Wilson" <douglas at NB.NET>
>>>> Subject:      Re: ah/ awe
>>>> -------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>> ---
>>>> ---------
>>>>
>>>> Here is my perception of the situation in Pittsburgh.
>>>>
>>>> In (say) Chicago, in my experience, there are usually two distinct
>>>> vowels
>>>> in "Don" and "Dawn": say, "Don" /dan/ 'unrounded', "Dawn" /dOn/
>>>> 'rounded'.
>>>>
>>>> In stereotypical Pittsburgh pronunciation, to my ear, "Don" and
>>>> "Dawn" are
>>>> both /dOn/. Pittsburghers regard them as sounding the same. They
>>>> both sound
>>>> (to me) like Chicago "Dawn".
>>>>
>>>> This does not by any means imply that stereotypical Pittsburghers
>>>> have any
>>>> trouble saying /dan/ or distinguishing it from /dOn/. Pittsburghers
>>>> say
>>>> /dan/ (which sounds to me the same as Chicago "Don") all the time:
>>>> but it's
>>>> spelled "down" (this is a sort of local shibboleth, I guess).
>>>>
>>>> -- Doug Wilson
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> --
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