~chooldrin

[Beverly Flanigan]

No, it's the George Yule book I recommended a few weeks ago: _The Study of
Language_ (Cambridge UP, I believe). He's British, by the way, but gives
both American and British variant pronunciations of most of his examples.

At 09:45 PM 10/18/2006, you wrote:
>Bev,
>
>Sorry, you lost me, especially the "getting screwed up" part.  But folks are
>saying ~chooldrin (~ool as in "wool") all the time as I hear it on TV.  My
>bit is that it's a shame that pronunciation is departing from the
>alphabetical principle.  It would be nice to have a mechanism to retain it
>as ~chill.
>
>About "butter", folks mostly "budder".  Parkay?  Budder.  I have it as an
>alternate pronunciation in my dictionary.
>
>There is plenty of data that crime and illiteracy go together.  The whole
>thrust of what I do is to make literacy easier.  Simpler.  Enhance "phonemic
>awareness."
>
>Would that be Dr. Valerie Yule?
>
>Tom Z
>
>
>
>
>>From: Beverly Flanigan <flanigan at OHIO.EDU>
>>Reply-To: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>>To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>>Subject: Re: ~chooldrin
>>Date: Wed, 18 Oct 2006 16:34:43 -0400
>>
>>---------------------- Information from the mail header
>>-----------------------
>>Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>>Poster:       Beverly Flanigan <flanigan at OHIO.EDU>
>>Subject:      Re: ~chooldrin
>>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>>At 01:01 PM 10/18/2006, you wrote:
>> >>From: Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at YAHOO.COM>
>> >>
>> >>"Southern"?  I've been saying "chooldrin" all my life and will continue
>>to
>> >>do so long after I am dead.
>> >>
>> >>   As far as I can remember, my  grandparents pronounced it the same
>>way.
>> >>I can even remember commenting on the crazy spelling in grade school,
>>only
>> >>to be told "that's just the way it's spelled."
>> >>
>> >>   Tom's convinced me to honor the alphabetic principle, however.  From
>>now
>> >>on, I spell it <chooldrin>.
>> >>
>> >>   JL
>> >
>> >No no no.  Hold on pahdnuh.  :-),   In my dream we do tradspeek, spoken
>>as
>> >traditionally spelled.
>> >So we need to hold on to the "chill" in "children".
>> >
>> >History shows changing spelling doesn't work.  Teddy Roosevelt and Andrew
>> >Carnegie together tried and couldn't change even the simplest most
>>obvious
>> >spelling.  So the only way to go is change pronunciation to fit trad
>> >spelling with tradspeek.  That way we end up with a phonetic language
>>that's
>> >easy to learn.  Literacy increases.  Crime decreases.  What a great
>>dream.
>> >
>> >Tom Z
>> >
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>> >
>> >------------------------------------------------------------
>> >The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>>
>>Good lord, I hope you don't really believe this, esp. the "crime decreases"
>>part.  Our spelling system is phonemic, not phonetic, and to insist that
>>people speak and pronounce phonemically (without schwa substitution in
>>unstressed syllables (as in 'about') or vowel shifts (as in 'children' to
>>chUldren) or consonant changes (as in 'butter' to b^Der, or would you
>>prefer bUter?) would screw us all up (oop/Up).  I had a student once, a
>>grade school teacher, who insisted that her pupils say 'b^ter', even though
>>it obviously didn't work.  (I'm trying to use a compromise phonetic symbol
>>system here, obviously--not easy to do when we don't share the universal
>>symbol system most of us on this list use professionally--and easy to learn
>>from Yule's book!)
>>
>>By the way, this all smacks of the kind of bias I just heard from a grad
>>student of mine, who said a "psycholinguist" told her that black children
>>in elementary school typically have a productive vocabulary of 400 words or
>>less.  I thought we had demolished that myth 40 years ago!  And those who
>>work in literacy know that there are far more serious impediments to
>>learning to read than the presumed mismatch between specific phonemes and
>>spelling, like the failure to perceive final consonants and the
>>morphological meaning they convey (plural -s, aspect markers, etc.)  See
>>Wm. Labov's  home page and articles
>>therein:  http://www.ling.upenn.edu/~wlabov/home.html.
>>
>>Beverly Flanigan
>>Ohio University
>>
>>------------------------------------------------------------
>>The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>
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>
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