vowels...

[Beverly Flanigan]

Actually, no, this isn't an example of the Southern Vowel Shift; rather,
it's one of many mergers going on in the Midland, the West (as David Bowie
said) and, to some extent, in the South.  Thus, hail and hell merge to hell
(vs. the Southern Shift diphthongizing of hell to hail), fill and feel
merge to fill, still and steel merge to still, pool and pull merge to pull,
etc.  In fact, I heard 'hail' pronounced like 'hell' just a few days ago in
a weather report from West Virginia.  But you're right; the written version
(signaled by * *, I presume) disambiguates, while the oral doesn't.  As I
recall, Mark's wife is from the "real" South, so her pronunciation to
'hail' exhibits the Southern (diphthongizing) shift.

Since I know Mai and I both used Wolfram and Schilling-Estes, I refer you
to pp. 70-71; however, W & S-E don't note the Midland usage for any of
their examples except Don/dawn.  See Labov's Phonological Atlas maps on his
homepage, and you'll see maps of these mergers locating them in the Midland
at various points; in Ohio, for example, they're on the western, southern,
and southeastern borders and moving in (I have two articles in the works on
these mergers based on data collected here in Athens County.)   They should
be in eastern Indiana too though, so maybe you have a student who can
pronounce the merger as 'hell'.

At 02:13 PM 5/1/00 -0700, you wrote:
>Great! This is an example of Southern Vowel Shift, right? What I can't
>figure out is how to deliver this story verbally (to students in class).
>Can anyone help?  The forms spelled as "hell" and "hail" in the story
>should both be pronounced the way "hell" is pronounced by people NOT
>participating in the Southern Vowel Shift, right? But does the punchline
>really disambiguate the word, if the story is heard, rather than read?
>
>-Mai
>
>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."
>
>Mai Kuha
>Department of English
>Ball State University
>mkuha at altavista.com
>
>_______________________________________________________________________
>
>Why pay when you don't have to? Get AltaVista Free Internet Access now!
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_____________________________________________
Beverly Olson Flanigan         Department of Linguistics
Ohio University                     Athens, OH  45701
Ph.: (740) 593-4568              Fax: (740) 593-2967
http://www.cats.ohiou.edu/linguistics/dept/flanigan.htm