Status

[Laurence Horn]

At 8:33 AM -0400 6/14/00, Steve K. wrote:

>On Tue, 13 Jun 2000, Rudolph C Troike wrote:
>
>> Sort of like hearing people pronounce "patio" with /ae/.
>
>AHD 1, back in the 60s, listed the first pronunciation of patio with
>/ae/ (short a, as in bat). This is also the first form in the latest
>Random House College and MW10...
>
>It appears with a-as-in-father in Kenyon & Knott's Pronouncing Dictionary
>Of American English. (1953, a copyright update of 1944). Websters 2nd has
>a-as-in-father; Webster's 3rd has a-as-in-bat, so there seems to have been
>a shift midcentury.
>

I (b. 1945) can't recall ever hearing anything OTHER than /ae/ for the
stressed vowel in "patio" in New York, California, or Wisconsin.  And I'm
sure I would have registered someone saying what would have been processed
as "potty-o", with the a-as-in-"father".  Could there in fact have been
some modicum of taboo avoidance involved in the posited mid-century shift?

Larry