laud/loud

[Scot LaFaive]

I don't have the low-back merger, and I've always pronounced them the same.
Of course, I rarely us "laud" and I've been to know to screw up and use
pronounce "wield" as "weld" without noticing.

Scot

On Thu, Mar 13, 2008 at 1:03 PM, Herb Stahlke <hfwstahlke at gmail.com> wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Herb Stahlke <hfwstahlke at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      laud/loud
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> An MSNBC newsreader just talked about people being [laUd at d] for good
> deeds.
> I suspect her writer had written <lauded> and she didn't recognize the
> word,
> at all or at that moment, on the teleprompter.  Would an educated
> twenty-something not know the <laud>/<loud> contrast?  I couldn't tell
> from
> her speech at the moment whether she has the low back vowel merger.
> Charitably, it could have been a slip.
>
> Herb
>
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