the dissappearing "awe" sound (UNCLASSIFIED)

Wed May 27 14:10:36 UTC 2009

Matt,

True.  USA Media dialect is a minority dialect in the world, just one of many, just like you and I each are one of many.  But in USA most folks would say that "on" ~aan rhymes with "Don", even though sometimes it rhymes with "gone" ~gaun (awe-droppers would say ~gaan).  However, about 70% of the native English speakers are in USA.  If only half said ~aan, then that would be 35% which is greater than if all the remaining 25% said ~aun.

I've read that British RP is spoken by only 15% of Brits, and that the UK makes up about 16% of all native speakers.  That would be only 2.4% of all native speakers.  A minority I think.

So "on" as ~aan, which does happen to be the way I say it.  Incredibly the m-w.com site give the ~aun notion as primary and ~aan as secondary although the speaker says ~aan.  I'm getting a bit disappointed with m-w.com.  It stands for Mirriam-Webster, and Webster stands for American English historically.  Thefreedictionary.com says ~aan and shows ~aan before ~aun.  Both dictionaries use different notation of course with goofy diacritics of course.  Truespel stabilizes this phonetic spelling mess.

Tom Zurinskas, USA - CT20, TN3, NJ33, FL5+
see truespel.com

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> Date: Tue, 26 May 2009 15:07:48 -0500
> From: gordonmj at MISSOURI.EDU
> Subject: Re: the dissappearing "awe" sound (UNCLASSIFIED)
> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender: American Dialect Society
> Poster: Matthew Gordon
> Subject: Re: the dissappearing "awe" sound (UNCLASSIFIED)
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> As was pointed out to you the last time you raised this example, "off" and
> "on" have the same vowel in many (probably most) dialects of English
> including modern RP (=Standard British English), Australian, and everywhere
> in the US except for the North (i.e. north of I-80, roughly, through the
> Great Lakes region). You, Tom, speak a minority dialect in which 'on' has an
> unrounded vowel as in 'Don.' For many others who preserve a distinction
> between 'Don' and 'dawn,' 'on' rhymes with the latter, and of course for
> those of us with the merger 'on' rhymes with both.
>
>
> On 5/26/09 2:24 PM, "Tom Zurinskas" wrote:
>
>
>> I recently warned of the awe-dropping trend making words "on and off"
>> dangerously close in pronunciation if both vowels are said the same - "ah".
>> Just recently on a flight the stewardess said "Turn all electronic media ah."
>> She clipped off the last sound. She ws an awe-dropper that meant to say
>> "off", but the "ah" sound to me is the word "on". I hope we all knew it was
>> "off", but that is a real problem.
>>
>> I don't want the nuclear powerplant manager saying "turn the water ah". And
>> have that interpreted the wrong way. It should be mandatory that "off" have
>> the "awe" vowel and "on" have the "ah" vowel for safety sake.
>>
>>
>> Tom Zurinskas, USA - CT20, TN3, NJ33, FL5+
>> see truespel.com
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> ----------------------------------------
>>> Date: Tue, 26 May 2009 11:14:33 -0500
>>> From: Bill.Mullins at US.ARMY.MIL
>>> Subject: Re: the dissappearing "awe" sound (UNCLASSIFIED)
>>> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>>>
>>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>>> -----------------------
>>> Sender: American Dialect Society
>>> Poster: "Mullins, Bill AMRDEC"
>>> Subject: Re: the dissappearing "awe" sound (UNCLASSIFIED)
>>> -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>> --
>>>
>>> Classification: UNCLASSIFIED
>>> Caveats: NONE
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>> -----Original Message-----
>>>> From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On
>>>> Behalf Of Tom Zurinskas
>>>> Sent: Saturday, May 23, 2009 10:13 AM
>>>> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>>>> Subject: the dissappearing "awe" sound
>>>>
>>>> Can you believe this advice to English learners. Life is simpler: One
>>>> less phoneme to say. To me this shows the need to stabilize the
>>>> language. No more awe-dropping.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>> If only someone had had the foresight to stabilize the language 600
>>> years ago, it would have been so much easier to slog through "Canterbury
>>> Tales".
>>>
>>> Seriously, why does the language need stabilizing? So what if it
>>> evolves? That's one of the reasons that English has become a global
>>> language.
>>>
>>> Classification: UNCLASSIFIED
>>> Caveats: NONE
>>>
>>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
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>
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