Oh those booths

[E Wayles Browne]

R. Cleminson asks: "does the form [buːθ] actually exist?  Or is it in fact [buθ]?"

Truly, [buːθ] exists in North America (rhyming with Ruth, sleuth, tooth, truth, uncouth, youth), and [buθ] (with the vowel of foot, put, wood, crook, wolf, push etc.) does not exist. In fact, there seem to be no words whatever that have [...uθ], to judge by a rhyming dictionary.

A further sidelight on 'booth': it's relatively more frequent in North America than in the UK, because a UK 'telephone box' is a North American '(tele)phone booth', and we used to have a lot of these until the advent of the cell/mobile phone.
--
Wayles Browne, Assoc. Prof. of Linguistics
Department of Linguistics
Morrill Hall 220, Cornell University
Ithaca, New York 14853, U.S.A.

tel. 607-255-0712 (o), 607-273-3009 (h)
fax 607-255-2044 (write FOR W. BROWNE)
e-mail ewb2 at cornell.edu

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