Nevada and Navajo

[Laurence Horn]

On May 21, 2013, at 7:39 PM, David A. Daniel wrote:

> I grew up in Southern California saying, and hearing all about me, both
> Nevada and Navajo with cat-sounding first a's. In 1979, in the movie Hair, I
> heard Berger (ostensibly from New York) say Nevada with a father-sounding
> first a, and thought, hmph, that's different. Now I find myself using the
> father-a too for Nevada, don't remember when that started but it was
> sometime post-Berger. But I still use cat-a for Navajo as, I would bet, do
> most southwesterners.
> DAD

Color[ae]do is another one.  And, for easterners and especially NYC types, there's also ['ar@"gan] (with secondary stress on the final syllable) instead of the native ['Or at g@n].  In each case, including that of Nev[ae]da with the "dad" vowel vs. the east coast version with the "father"-vowel, I was led to believe that our effete pronunciation was a kind of (what we'd now call) hyper-foreignism, and that only the more domesticated pronunciations with {ae] as in "dad" and with an unstressed schwa for the last syllable of "Oregon", were authentic.  I assume "Navajo" would have been similar, although I don't recall being corrected for my [a]-as-in-father vowel on that one in the same way (saying "Navajo rug" in my mind, I'm sure I always used the "father"-vowel).

LH
>
> -----Original Message-----
>
>
> Poster:       Herb Stahlke <hfwstahlke at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: Nevada and Navajo
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> ---
>
> Tom,
>
> She may have given you the Americanized pronunciation.  The Navajo /a/
> vowel is a low back vowel as in English "father," not as in "cat."
>
> Herb
>
>
>> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> Poster:       Tom Zurinskas <truespel at HOTMAIL.COM>
>> Subject:      Nevada and Navajo
>>
>>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> ---
>>
>> Vacationing in Nevada I picked up tourist literature that had the word
>> Neva=
>> da with a breve over the first a showing that they really want that letter
>> =
>> to be pronounced as in "cat" (~Nevvadu) as if tourists would know what
>> that=
>> diacritical mark means.  Also I asked a Navajo woman how to say Navajo.
>> A=
>> gain the first a would be as in cat (~Navuhoe).
>>
>> Tom Zurinskas=2C Conn 20 yrs=2C Tenn 3=2C NJ 33=2C now Fl 9.
>> See how English spelling links to sounds at http://justpaste.it/ayk
>>
>>
>> =20
>>                                          =
>>
>
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