9.733, Disc: Recent Change in English

[LINGUIST Network]

LINGUIST List:  Vol-9-733. Sun May 17 1998. ISSN: 1068-4875.

Subject: 9.733, Disc: Recent Change in English

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=================================Directory=================================

1)
Date:  Sun, 17 May 1998 09:00:04 +0400
From:  "Isa Kocher" <786isa at gto.net.om>
Subject:  Re: 9.727, Disc: Recent changes in English

2)
Date:  Sun, 17 May 1998 02:23:47 -0400
From:  Joseph F Foster <fosterjf at email.uc.edu>
Subject:  Re: 9.729, Disc: Recent Change in English, "the Ukraine"

3)
Date:  Sun, 17 May 1998 06:29:11 -0500 (CDT)
From:  Rebecca Larche Moreton <mlrlm at sunset.backbone.olemiss.edu>
Subject:  Recent change in English

-------------------------------- Message 1 -------------------------------

Date:  Sun, 17 May 1998 09:00:04 +0400
From:  "Isa Kocher" <786isa at gto.net.om>
Subject:  Re: 9.727, Disc: Recent changes in English



- --------

> From: LINGUIST Network <linguist at linguistlist.org> Some younger
> responders expressed their doubts as to whether the
>following
> "old" pronunciations had ever really existed:
>    [0lbukeRk] (instead of [&lbuk at Rki]) for _Albuquerque_
>    [YlYnwa]   (instead of [YlYn9y(s)]) for _Illinois_
>    [yos at mayt] (instead of [yosEmYti])  for _Yosemite_
> and that got me to start doubting myself. Can anyone among the
> "older" fellow LINGUIST-Listers confirm either existence or
> non-existence of the "old" pronunciations before say mid 1950-s?

Having passed the half century mark by a few years, I might submit
these personal observations:

[&lbuk at Rki] for _Albuquerque_ is the only way I can recall that I have
ever heard it.

[YlYnwa] for _Illinois_ strikes me as bizarre and I can't imagine
anyone ever having said it except as a teenage joke after a French
class.

[yos at mayt] and [yosEmYti] for _Yosemite_ seem both to be forms I can
recall having heard, although the former seems more "American" to my
ear, and the latter more "TV announcer".

Isa


-------------------------------- Message 2 -------------------------------

Date:  Sun, 17 May 1998 02:23:47 -0400
From:  Joseph F Foster <fosterjf at email.uc.edu>
Subject:  Re: 9.729, Disc: Recent Change in English, "the Ukraine"

        English has a definite article. The last time I checked,
Ukrainian didnt. It may be developing one; northern dialects of Great
Russian appear to be. But even if Ukrainian (Little Russian!) be
developing such an article, there is no reason to suppose it will work
like the English one.  Indeed, articles are notoriously idiomatic for
languages that have them, as a look at the way related languages of
Western Europe differ in use of them.

        The move to get Americans to stop saying "the Ukraine" and
start saying "Ukraine" is largely, I suggest, the spawn of a misguided
political correctness and leads to the absurdity of trying to make
article usage in a language that has one conform to imagined usage in
a language that doesnt.  It is claimed that somehow the use of the
article relegates Ukrainia (why isnt anybody trying to prescribe
that?) i.e. the Ukraine to subordinate status. Nobody accuses those of
us who say "the Argentine" of therewith deprecating the Independence
and Sovereignty of that country.

        Me, Im going to keep right on saying "the Ukraine" and "the
Argentine" -- Oh by the way -- I'll keep saying "the Gambia" too.

Joe Foster
  Joseph F Foster
   Dept of Anthropology
   U of Cincinnati


-------------------------------- Message 3 -------------------------------

Date:  Sun, 17 May 1998 06:29:11 -0500 (CDT)
From:  Rebecca Larche Moreton <mlrlm at sunset.backbone.olemiss.edu>
Subject:  Recent change in English


This is an interesting discussion; what I am getting from it mainly is
that many of the "changes" people have been noticing amount to the
spreading of items which have been in the language in one or another
geographical area for a long time.  This makes sense, since people are
more than ever before moving away from their own D1 (first dialect)
areas to new places to live and work, and since the mass media are
available to people everywhere.  It is as though the great pot of
English is being stirred and stirred.  It will be fun to see what
boils up and replaces what.

And speaking of the mass media: NPR has been mentioned several times
in the discussion; I agree: if you hear it on All Things Considered,
you know it's happening!

Rebecca Larche Moreton
301 South Ninth Street
Oxford, MS 38655

<mlrlm at olemiss.edu>


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