foreign and domestic "a"

[Laurence Horn]

On Jan 14, 2013, at 12:52 PM, Laurence Horn wrote:

>
> On Jan 14, 2013, at 12:42 PM, Charles C Doyle wrote:
>
>> I notice, to my surprise, that some dictionaries (e.g. M-W 9th Collegiate) now show [neesh] as a variant pronunciation of "niche."
>>
>> Regarding the name "Gandhi":  Hasn't the pronunciation with ash been most common in Britain (and perhaps India),
>
> as in "Gandhi-dancer"?
>
>> with "aa" widely heard among Americans (trying to out-Brit the British?)?
>
> Not sure about out-Britting the Brits; they're much more likely to nativize "pasta" to rhyme with "Rasta" or "Shasta" than we are.  (I think /paest@/ might also be used in Canada?)
>
> Then there are place names like "Colorado" and "Nevada", where locals are more likely to domesticate the stressed vowel to ash than easterners are.
>
> LH
>

On second thought, I wonder if what's going on (apologies to anyone who has discussed this in print, or in an earlier thread) is that in the U.S. (outside of old New Englanders) the /ae/ vs. /a/ variation in such cases is based on the domestic vs. foreign feature (which is why we in the eastern U.S. tend to use the "foreign" vowel in ColorAdo, NevAda, pAsta, and GAndhi), while for the Brits it's still more of a lexical and phonological split ("cAn" with /ae/ vs. "can't" with /a/, etc.; I know the relevant environments and conditioning factors have been described closely in descriptive work over the centuries and are complicated and subject to change).  I don't know the conditioning factors, but presumably (I could be wrong) they would "domesticate" a word like "pasta" to rhyme with, say, "canasta".  Can't be entirely phonological, though, given e.g. the /ast@/ of the Brits' versions of "plaster", "faster", etc.

LH

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