Can some native USA English speakers say "awe" or not

[Charles Doyle]

Glossing Flastaff's ". . . let not us that are squires of the night's body be call'd thieves of the day's beauty" (1 Henry IV, 2. 24-25), Shakespeare scholars have posited a four-way play on the words "body," "bawdy," "beauty," and "booty" (in the old sense!).  Of course, wordplay doesn't necessarily entail perfect homophony.

--Charlie
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---- Original message ----
>Date: Fri, 27 Oct 2006 07:26:40 -0700
>From: Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at YAHOO.COM>
>Subject: Re: Can some native USA English speakers say "awe" or not
>To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>
>
>If Shakespeare's body language was much like his literary language, he must really have stood out in a crowd.
>
>  Same goes for his bawdy language.
>  JL
>
>Benjamin Barrett <gogaku at IX.NETCOM.COM> wrote:

>
>Sometimes I have similar thoughts, though opposite.
>
>One day I was in a room of sociolinguistics student and a SL professor and made a reference to the "bawdy" language of Shakespeare. Every single person thought I meant "body" despite the fact that "body language" and 'bawdy language" have different stress patterns. And they were in MY native dialect territory of Seattle; transplants, every one.
>

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