wheel barrels?

[Rachel Henderson]

Umm....ok....note in advance that my skills are dusty, so I now belong to
this list..and have been reading like crazy.  That probably explains my
amateur input to, but that's O.K., we all have to start somewhere....no?

I would not say 'eel marrow' as 'marrel' either.

But I can believe that English speakers would mistake wheelbarrow for
wheelbarrel, not just due to natural articulation habits, but, also quite
likely, because actual wheelbarrow, in a way, is akin to a barrel with a
wheel (but with the top removed).

By the way....my 15 year-old son just walked in the room, so I asked him how
to spell wheelbarrow.  He spelled it correctly...and chuckled when I told
him that I had to do a double-take on the word (it's been a long time since
I had pondered the spelling), and he professed immediately that he thinks
the spelling was changed from -barrel to -barrow at some point in recent
(100) years because of southern accents.....hehe.....

Rachel Henderson


----- Original Message -----
From: "Laurence Horn" <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
To: <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
Sent: Wednesday, August 11, 2004 12:07 PM
Subject: Re: wheel barrels?


> ---------------------- 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: wheel barrels?
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------
-----
>
> At 10:48 AM -0500 8/11/04, Lesa Dill wrote:
> >I had always assumed "wheelbarrel" was the simply an example of
> >regressive assimilation.  Perhaps all explanations for similar
> >language variation are equally multidimensional.
> >
> I would still maintain that the prior existence of "barrel" is
> crucial here.  Consider the local delicacy of "eel marrow"--would we
> expect this to come to be known as "eel marrel" by regressive
> assimilation?  Possible, but I would wager unlikely.
>
> Or "oil tarrow" (something to do with burning candles) > oil tarrel?
>
> Google turns up a Bill Tarrow (spokesman for Washington State
> Employment Security); we could ask him if he's called "Tarrell" more
> often than other non-l-final members of his family; ditto for Phil
> Farrow (captain of Holderness boys' hockey team) vs. Mia.
>
> larry