[Ads-l] The pronunciation of "dwarf"

[Wilson Gray]

> Tim Conway's character, "Dorf?"

Apropos of nothing, to revive a conversational cliché of the '50's, my own
favorite among his characters was "Elfin John."

On Thu, Apr 4, 2019 at 11:40 PM Peter Reitan <pjreitan at hotmail.com> wrote:

> Related to the naming of Tim Conway's character, "Dorf?"
>
> Get Outlook for Android<https://aka.ms/ghei36>
>
> ________________________________
> From: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU> on behalf of
> Charles C Doyle <cdoyle at UGA.EDU>
> Sent: Thursday, April 4, 2019 1:48:30 PM
> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> Subject: The pronunciation of "dwarf"
>
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Charles C Doyle <cdoyle at UGA.EDU>
> Subject:      The pronunciation of "dwarf"
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> In a recent conversation with a friend, within an interval of about 20
> seco=
> nds he pronounced the word =93dwarf=94 four times without the /w/. I asked
> =
> him about the pronunciation, and he insisted that that=92s the only way he=
> =92s ever heard it pronounced (obviously untrue, since he had just heard
> me=
>  ask, =93Do you always pronounce =93dWarf=94 without the /w/?=94).  He is
> a=
>  retired linguistics professor in his late 60=92s, white, who lived in
> Mary=
> land and Delaware from birth through his early adulthood.
>             None of the dozen dictionaries I consulted record a w-less
> pron=
> unciation of =93dwarf.=94 Of the several specialized pronunciation
> dictiona=
> ries that I looked at, only one does--the Oxford Dictionary of
> Pronunciatio=
> n for Current English (2001), which shows the =93w=94 inside parenthesis
> ma=
> rks, which means (according to the introduction) that the =93w=94 belongs
> t=
> o an =93optional pronunciation=94 in American English.
>             Is the pronunciation without the /w/ at all common?  Is it
> regi=
> onal?
>
>
> --Charlie
>
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>


-- 
-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

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