Southron birds

[Beverly Flanigan]

I have a belated comment on the subject heading of this old note (not on
the content of the message, sorry):  Others probably noticed that for
weeks/months on NPR one of the announcers referred to the North[wEstr at n]
Mutual Life underwriters (@=schwa).  Someone must have gotten to him
eventually, so now he says North[wEst at r@n]--substituting epenthesis for
metathesis.  I caught the first pronunciation particularly because my
brother in Minneapolis metathesizes "western," even though we didn't grow
up doing so.  Is this a recent change in progress?  (I'm aware that Old or
Middle English--can't remember which--did so, as in 'children' and
'brethren' also).


At 10:55 PM 6/13/99 -0400, you wrote:
>"Dennis R. Preston" wrote
> (Now for real confusion, I bet y'all Northerners don't know who's looking
> for what in such utterances as "I'm going to get me some cock.")
>
>When I first met Karl Nicholas (from Mississippi), one of the first things
>he said to me (from North Carolina) was, "I bet you were in the service
>before you found out that 'cock' meant 'penis'."  Since then he and I have
>occasionally puzzled over the etymology of the ' female pudenda' usage.
>After returning from a conference in Jamaica, he reported his encounter with
>a little girl who offered to show him her 'cockle.'  On the other hand, I
>found that Coca-Cola had problems in Denmark until it learned that 'coke'
>meant 'female pudenda.'
>
>Bill
>