Ambiguous AHD/AmE pronunciation guides

[Alan Knutson]

 I can relate, when I was in grade school I was constantly frustated
with all the pronunciation guides being from r-less dialects, although
it was probably the trigger to my lifelong interest in linguistics (both
synchronic and diachronic).

-----Original Message-----
From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf
Of Benjamin Barrett
Sent: Monday, December 17, 2007 6:04 PM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: [ADS-L] Ambiguous AHD/AmE pronunciation guides


I remember as a child being confused by the pronunciation guide in
dictionaries. To this day (I'm now 41), they are confusing.

A few weeks ago, I finally got my copy of the AHD 4, and remain
confused.

For backwards "c" (circumflex o), the words "caught, paw, for, horrid,
hoarse" are provided in the pronunciation key. Since I pronounce the
first two as /a/ and the last three as /o/, I have no leg to stand on
when this symbol is used. My general rule in this case has always been
to guess from the spelling. I guess that's generally all right since if
I don't know the pronunciation already, the word probably isn't
conversational enough to use, anyway. Nevertheless...

AFAIK, at least half of Californians speak like I do (I'm a native
Seattleite), so at least 5% of the US population should have this
problem.

Careful notes in the endpapers provide an explanation for people who
split "horse, hoarse" and also special notation for words like "forest".
Both of these careful notation patterns are useless to me, though I'm
sure they are critical for a significant percentage of English speakers.

At least five percent of the population seems sizable enough that this
pronunciation pattern should be addressed. Is this split so intractable
it's ignored, or is there a reason why this pronunciation pattern is
left ambiguous?

Ever-curious about thisly yours

Benjamin Barrett
a cyberbreath for language life
livinglanguages.wordpress.com

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