Query: "thoo"

[Alice Faber]

On Tuesday, November 27, 2001, at 01:18  PM, Gerald Cohen wrote:

>    FWIW, "through" was the first thought that popped into my mind too
> upon reading the initial query. Also, perhaps the loss of "r" here
> started in the plural ("They're through" rather than "He's through"),
> putting 2 r's in proximity and leading to the tendency (not law)
> which linguists call "dissimilation to zero." A parallel example
> would be a pronunciation I have often heard in the Ozarks: "liberry"
> for "library."
>
The Ozarks extend into upstate New York? Seriously, in my elementary
school, 30 miles north of Times Square, "liberry" (as opposed to "libRary"
) was a "mispronunciation" often corrected by my teachers, so I suppose it
was frequently used by at least some of my classmates. In my mind,
"liberry" is on par with "Febuary".

Alice
--
Alice Faber
Haskins Laboratories                                    Tel: (203) 865-6163
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