spelling pronunciation--words in -or

[Alison Murie]

On Mar 20, 2009, at 7:29 AM, Charles Doyle wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Charles Doyle <cdoyle at UGA.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: spelling pronunciation--words in -or
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> E. E. Cummings's lovely poem "I Sing of Olaf" (1931) begins:
>
> i sing of Olaf glad and big
> whose warmest heart recoiled at war:
> a conscientious object-or
>
> The rhyme and the hyphenated spelling certainly suggest stress and
> an "open o" in the final syllable (or, if you must, an /o/).  For
> what effect I'm not sure--perhaps to suggest the pretentiousness of
> the bureaucrats who assign the classification or of the politicians
> who denounce it?
>
> --Charlie
> _
Thanks, Charlie, for reminding me of this poem, an old favorite that I
hadn't thought of for years.
AM

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