vowels...

[David Bowie]

From:    Mai Kuha <mkuha at ALTAVISTA.COM>
: On Mon, 01 May 2000, Mark_Mandel at DRAGONSYS.COM wrote:

: > One day my seven year old daughter, Megan, decided to tattle
: > on her brother to her teacher: "Mrs. H., last night
: > my brother hit me in the head with a piece of ice and
: > it hurt like hell."
: > Shocked at what she'd heard, Mrs. H. quickly responded,
: > "Excuse me, Megan?"
: (...)
: > "No, Mrs. H., REALLY, my brother hit me with a piece of
: > ice in the head and it hurt like *hail* falling on my head."

: Great! This is an example of Southern Vowel Shift, right?...

Kindasorta. That is, it's not just a Southern Shift thing (actually
unsurprising, since following /l/ seems to somehow encourage merger). Out
here in Utah the fail-fell merger (and the feel-fill merger, FTM) are pretty
widespread, and it can lead to some amusement at times.

Story: I attended (Mormon) church services with some family friends this
past Sunday at their congregation, and one of the songs that the
congregation sang was titled "We'll sing all hail to Jesus' name". The guy
that announced the song had the fail-fell merger pretty strongly, though...

<snip>

David Bowie                                       Department of English
Assistant Professor                            Brigham Young University
db.list at pmpkn.net              http://humanities.byu.edu/faculty/bowied
   The opinions stated here are not necessarily those of my employer