"It's _away_ better than fast food! It's Wendy's!" [NT}

[Paul A Johnston, Jr.]

I hear the speaker with a diphthong here, more like barred-i + u or even [Iu] (think Valley Girl).  But, if these nuclei descend from an [u], there's usually a barred-u or fronter stage that it either developed from, or alongside it, as a variant.

Paul Johnston

----- Original Message -----
From: Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
Date: Tuesday, July 21, 2009 11:03 pm
Subject: Re: "It's _away_ better than fast food! It's Wendy's!" [NT}

> ---------------------- 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: "It's _away_ better than fast food! It's
> Wendy's!" [NT}
> -------------------------------------------------------------------
> ------------
>
> At 9:34 PM -0400 7/21/09, Wilson Gray wrote:
> >
> >@Larry:
> >
> >You mean the case in which "food" sounds very close to [f-u-
> umlaut-d]?
>
> Yup.
>
> LH
>
> >That's been annoying the hell out of me for years. But what's really
> >broken my heart is the use of [&u], a pronunciation once much derided
> >amongst the colored as *the* outstanding example of the laughable
> >folk-speech of The Man, in place of [au], and the spread of the
> glo?al>stop, among younger black speakers. That is, younger than
> *I* am.
> >
> >That these changes actually *pre-date* the election of a black
> >President is astonishing to me. What's their motivation?!
> >
> >-Wilson
> >
> >>
> >>  I have to say that what always struck me about this commercial (or
> >>  rather the coda, which appears with slightly different
> pronunciations>>  in several different Wendy's commercials that
> have been airing for
> >>  some time) is not the adverb but the fronting of the vowel in
> "food",>>  very noticeable for example in this one:
> >>
> >>  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mwqJRY67H-k&feature=related
> >>
> >>  LH
> >>
> >>  ------------------------------------------------------------
> >>  The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
> >>
> >
> >
> >
> >--
> >-Wilson
> >---
> >All say, "How hard it is that we have to die"---a strange
> complaint to
> >come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
> >-----
> >-Mark Twain
> >
> >------------------------------------------------------------
> >The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>

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