Pronunciation of 'Terrorism'.

[Dennis R. Preston]

If "being careful" means trying not to sound like where you are from
(so long as where you are from is not a good place to be from
linguisitically) then I understand this. As we know, New Yorkers
suffer lots of lingsitic insecuirity, so maybe (but just maybe)
Giuliani was "trying not to sound like where he was from."

Now I understand how some people suspect they have three /r/'s. They
count the shared coda and onset of the first two syllabes as two.
Funny they don't do the same for "r&r" and "riz" (using this
notation); then they could claim four. That is, why

ter-r&r and not

r&r-ri

?

Of course, I still don't understand General American (unless it's
what my Michigan students tell me they speak, before I show them on
spectrograms how decidedly they are in the grasp of the Northern
Cities Chain Shift. It does not make their day.).

dInIs (who remembers being Macbeth centuries ago and being forced to
say "horror" three times)


Someone reminded me that -ism is actually TWO syllables. Why does part of me
nonetheless perceive it to be one? Thus, I hit all three Rs, and do the
whole word as four syllables.

Using the online M-W system, 'ter-r&r-"i-z&m, 'ter-r&r-"ist gets close.

I used 'General American' to describe Giuliani's accent, in that he's moved
it more to the center, taking care with his Rs. Nonetheless, he still says
'drawer a line' when not being careful. What else are you supposed to use?
--
Dennis R. Preston
Department of Linguistics and Languages
Michigan State University
East Lansing MI 48824-1027 USA
preston at pilot.msu.edu
Office: (517)353-0740
Fax: (517)432-2736