Austracism

[Dennis R. Preston]

Well, yes, RP pronounces "Austria" with the vowel of "cot," but that is the
vowel of RP "cot," which, to most US ears, sounds like the vowel of
"caught," at least to those US ears which distinguish "caught" and "cot."
On the other hand, RP "caught" sounds like "coat" to US ears (in general).

dInIs


>RP pronounces "Austria" with the vowel of "cot", incidentally.
>
>Dan
>
>>From: "Peter A. McGraw" <pmcgraw at LINFIELD.EDU>
>>Reply-To: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>>To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>>Subject: Re: Austracism
>>Date: Wed, 9 Feb 2000 15:40:16 -0800
>>
>>It's precisely your (and my) differentiation of the two sounds that makes
>>this a pun.  If you merged the two vowels, it wouldn't be a pun for
>>you--just a new instance of homophony.  Or maybe it would be what might be
>>called an "orthographic pun."  (Is there a word for that?  Here we go
>>again....)
>>
>>Anyway, thanks for answering my question.
>>
>>Peter Mc.
>>
>>--On Wed, Feb 9, 2000 4:09 PM -0700 David Bowie <db.list at BYU.EDU> wrote:
>>
>> > so it seems to be a pun on
>> > "ostracism".
>> >
>> > Of course, i don't merge "cot" and "caught", so it's not a perfect pun
>>to
>> > my ears...
>>
>>
>>
>>****************************************************************************
>>                                Peter A. McGraw
>>                    Linfield College   *   McMinnville, OR
>>                             pmcgraw at linfield.edu
>
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Dennis R. Preston
Department of Linguistics and Languages
Michigan State University
East Lansing MI 48824-1027 USA
preston at pilot.msu.edu
Office: (517)353-0740
Fax: (517)432-2736