pronunciation of "Worcester" (Mass.) (was: ADS-L Digest - 22 Feb 2009 to 23 Feb 2009 (#2009-55))

[Paul A Johnston, Jr.]

This does seem to be a gap in the IPA, though I have used barred capital I when talking about a lax
high central unrounded vowel, and tried to get away with a barred upside-down horseshoe for its
rounded counterpart, which was very common in my Scottish data in either words like MOON,
SPOON or OUT, DOWN, depending on whether the speakers were using their Scottish Standard
English or their Scots variety.  I was told to use the symbol for a lax high back vowel with two dots
over it, though this, to me, would seem to be a symbol for a centralized back vowel, not a central
one.  I think that's the accepted symbol though, and I haven't seen one for the unrounded vowel in
my 2nd syllable of chicken.  It doesn't sound like Russian y, as in my, ty, vy though, which is a
barred /i/.

Paul Johnston

----- Original Message -----
From: Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
Date: Wednesday, February 25, 2009 12:56 pm
Subject: Re: pronunciation of "Worcester" (Mass.) (was: ADS-L Digest - 22  Feb 2009 to 23 Feb
2009 (#2009-55))

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header ------------
> -----------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: pronunciation of "Worcester" (Mass.) (was: ADS-L
> Digest - 22
>              Feb               2009 to 23 Feb 2009 (#2009-55))
> --------------------------------------------------------------------
> -----------
>
> At 11:50 AM -0500 2/25/09, Mark Mandel wrote:
> >On Wed, Feb 25, 2009 at 11:36 AM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com>
> wrote:>
> >>  FWIW, a friend of mine, a native of Worcester, pronounces the name
> >>  something like "Wistuh." I heard the same or, at least, a very
> similar>>  pronunciation, used here in Boston by a guy who said
> that he had been
> >>  to - not "lived in" - "Wistuh." I'd expect a lower vowel than
> what is
> >>  probably an unrounded /u/. Naturally, another possibility is
> that my
> >>  hearing simply isn't what it used to be.
> >>
> >>  -Wilson
> >>
> >
> >Now, that rings a bell.
> >
> >For 20 years or so I lived in Framingham, Mass., which is halfway
> between>Boston and Worcester. I think that vowel is close to a lax
> barred i -- high
> >central unrounded (but probably not spread). So /'w+st@/, using
> '+' for
> >barred i and '@' for schwa. Might even be unrounded back, a lax
> turned m.
> >
> >(Did IPA drop barred cap i, or was it ever official? I certainly
> remember>seeing and using it.
>
> On my chart, there's both a cap I and a (lower-case) barred i, the
> former where we'd guess it should be (with the cap Y as the rounded
> version) and the latter a high central unrounded vowel, of which the
> rounded counterpart is barred u.  Then there are the back pair, the
> upside-down m we were both referring to and the usual [u].  But
> there's no cap barred i as far as (the) i can see.
>
> >And by analogy to that and to cap i and cap Y, I like
> >to think of the phone formally written as llax turned m as a
> Cyrillic "sha",
>
> It sha looks like one.  No little hook on the lower right that would
> turn it into a shcha.
>
> LH
>
> >U+0448.)
> >
> >m a m
> >
> >------------------------------------------------------------
> >The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org