english only passes in utah

[Alice Faber]

James Smith said:
>--- Lynne Murphy <lynnem at COGS.SUSX.AC.UK> wrote:
> >
> > I've never seen the word "Utahns" before.  Is the
> > 'n' syllabic?
>
> > Lynne
>
>No.  The fed's tried to convince us we were "Utahans"
>a while back, but that fell flat on its face.  If my
>recall isn't totally fuzzy, Sen. Hatch even brought up
>on the Senate floor the question as to whether the
>Federal government was to refer to a resident of Utah
>as "Utahn" (prefered and used locally) or "Utahan"
>(official fed usage at the time).  I don't recall
>whether or not there was ever an "official"
>resolution.
>
Somewhere in my files, I have a copy of an article from the Salt Lake
Tribune that Marianna sent me when we were working on one of our Utah
speech papers. One of my colleagues had questioned our use of "Utahn"
as opposed to "Utahan" in the ms. While this colleague ordinarily has
very good instincts about English style, we did have to convince him
that we couldn't possibly say "Utahan".

--
Alice Faber, Manager                                         (860) 685-2954
Infant Language Development Laboratory                  afaber at wesleyan.edu
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