Canoodle: odds and ends

[James A. Landau]

In a message dated 11/15/02 10:11:26 AM Eastern Standard Time,
laurence.horn at YALE.EDU writes:

> >This is interesting, I have *never* heard donkey rhyme with monkey!
>
>  Meanwhile, back on the East Coast, I rhyme them with impunity.  But
>  "honky" rhymes with neither, so it's a matter of lexical diffusion
>  rather than purely a phonological matter.  (The adjective "wonky"
>  rhymes with "honky", but then unlike the others it has an internal
>  morpheme boundary.)

I rhyme "donkey" with "monkey", i.e.  /'duhn kee/,  but I find /'dawnk ee/ or
/'dahnk ee/ acceptable.  (And yes I do hear the /k/ move across the syllable
boundary, though I do not have the knowledge of phonetics to say why this
happens).

However, in my experience "honky" meaning "whte, usually disparaging" also
rhymes with "monkey".  Yes, the two politically incorrect words rhyme.  I
can't recall ever haing heard /'hawnk ee/ or /'hahnk ee/ in this sense.  Yes,
 /'hawnk ee 'tawnk/, but here this is probably to make the first and last
syllables rhyme.

Raised in Louisville KY, college in Michigan, than living in DC and South
Jersey for 33 years.

       - Jim Landau