Gone feeshin'

[Frank Abate]

A further comment on this phenomenon (from one who lived in Columbus, Ohio,
for 5 years in the 70s and noticed it) -- Dave Thomas, the founder of
Wendy's, featured in Wendy's TV commercials for years, has this
characteristic.  It sometimes occurs in those ads.

Frank Abate

****************

>>

Tensing before /S/ is wide-spread in Central Indiana too, although
it seems to divide along social class lines.  It may simply be
that immigrants from Appalachia, many of whom came during the gas
boom to work for glass companies like Ball Brothers, brought that
pronunciation and their communities have maintained it.  We also
have tensing of /U/ before /S/ in words like /pUS/ and /bUS at z,
which is similarly stigmatized.  I've also heard "leash" as /leiS/
from tensing speakers.

A complementary change taking place among middle and upper middle
class speakers over the past twenty years--that I've been watching
it, at least--is the unrounding of /U/ before /S/ so that the
vowels in "bush", "push", "cushion", etc. become high back
unrounded.  I can't think of an appropriate ASCII IPA symbol for
that just now, but I'm referring to the IPA inverted-m.

Herb Stahlke

Herb Stahlke

>>> bergdahl at OHIO.EDU 09/29/00 07:40AM >>>
In SE Ohio the tensing before -sh in fish, special (which
produces the
homophone special = spacial), and bush is widespread and
stigmatized
although former Gov Rhodes from jackson, Ohio didn't try to limit
it.  I
don't know if the much more  prevalent tensing of /E/ before -zh
in
measure, treasure &c. is related but that goes completely
unnoticed and
does not identify social class or region.

____________________________________________________________________
David Bergdahl          http://oak.cats.ohiou.edu/~bergdahl
     tel:
(740) 593-2783
366 Ellis Hall     Ohio University  Athens, Ohio 45701-2979
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(740) 593-2818

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