Status

[Donald M. Lance]

In 20th century American English, a word spelled p-a-t-i-o or v-i-d-e-o would have a
"short vowel" in the first syllable.  How would s-t-u-d-e-o as a neologism be pronounced
nowadays?  Which of the regional variants of American "short o" would be the equivalent of
Spanish /a/ -- California, New York, Chicahgo, Chicawgo, north/east/south/central/west
Texas, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Wisconsin?  Maybe a Chicahgoan's pronunciation of 'patio' with
/a/ would sound sort of OK, but others sound either affected or
intentional-recognition-of-borrowing.  Because of my South Texas background, I have
ambivalent feelings and use the Spanish-like vowel with some people and the American
English pronunciation with others.  Most of the American renderings of the vowel in 'pot'
are rather different from the Spanish vowel.

DMLance


Peter Richardson wrote:

> I'm with Larry. "Potty-o" for patio sounds raw-ther pretentious to me (b.
> 1943, native speaker of northern Illinois-ese).>
>
> Peter R.
>
> > 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
> >