the long and the short of it

[Enid Pearsons]

The difference in some dictionaries between o-breve and a-with-two-dots
accommodates that pocket of New Englanders who do _not_ pronounce bomb
(o-breve) in quite the same way as balm (a-with-two-dots).  Think British .
. . or _almost_ British.  Dog and laundry vary, depending on one's dialect,
between o-breve and o-circumflex (IPA open o).

Enid Pearsons
(for many years in charge of pronunciations)
Random House Dictionaries

----- Original Message -----
From: "Laurence Horn" <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
To: <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
Sent: Monday, March 17, 2003 7:35 PM
Subject: Re: the long and the short of it


> ---------------------- Information from the mail
header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: the long and the short of it
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------
-----
>
> At 4:09 PM -0800 3/17/03, FRITZ JUENGLING wrote:
> >  >>> laurence.horn at YALE.EDU 03/17/03 03:22PM >>>
> >At 6:11 PM -0500 3/17/03, David Bergdahl wrote:
> >
> >>We didn't have those, but I thought "short o" was the vowel of "dog"
> >>and "laundry" as opposed to that of "log", "frog", and "father".
> >>Hard to remember, though.
> >>larry
> >
> >Those are all the same for me.
> >Fritz
>
> Right, but for those who round the vowel of "dog" but not that of the
> other words in the group, it makes a certain kind of sense to retain
> the name "short o" for the rounded open-o vowel of "dog", while using
> some "a" vowel label (but not "long a!") for the unrounded one in
> "log", "father", etc.  I remember college dictionaries using the
> a-with-two-dots-on-it (formally, but not functionally, an umlaut) for
> that one, and an o-with-a-breve for the "dog" vowel, usually with a
> note somewhere about variation.  Or maybe the dictionaries used the
> o-breve for "log" and "frog" too, and included a note to the effect
> that some speakers (like me) pronounce those words with the
> a-double-dot-on-top.
>
> larry
>