the good old days, and that pesky letter "shee" (formerly "shch")

[Paul B. Gallagher]

John Dunn wrote:

> It may also be worth noting that Russian is not the only language
> that suffers from the teaching of obsolescent pronunciations.  It
> would seem that in Russia (and elsewhere) students learning the
> specifically British pronunciation of English are still taught to
> pronounce words such as 'back' with a front vowel, even though no-one
> in Britain, apart perhaps from certain members of the Royal Family
> and a few elderly ladies in the wealthier suburbs of Edinburgh, has
> used that pronunciation for fifty years or more.

???

As an American I'm completely baffled by this. How can this vowel be 
anything /but/ front??? (We have [bæk] in all but a few dialects.)[FN] 
I'm familiar with the British renditions of words like "pass" with /a/ 
as in "father," but I don't think I've ever heard this done in "back." 
Say it ain't so!

--------------------
[FN]--I am referring to the band of dialects from about Chicago to 
Albany, where the Northern Cities Shift has globally replaced /æ/ with a 
diphthong ranging from [eə] as in "fail" to [iə] as in "idea." Listen to 
Hillary Clinton or Bob Woodward and you'll see what I mean.

-- 
War doesn't determine who's right, just who's left.
--
Paul B. Gallagher
pbg translations, inc.
"Russian Translations That Read Like Originals"
http://pbg-translations.com

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