Question about Scottish

[Beverly Flanigan]

Yes!  I read the donkey's name with an 'r' to my son, long before I got
into linguistics, obviously!  And remember Whittier's "harrd hearrt" (in
whatever poem)?  I wonder if the double 'r' was meant to push the vowel
farther front (to print /a/ in IPA) to reflect the New England vowel?  But
do you think present-day New England schoolteachers understand this when
they ask their kids to read this stuff?  British teachers wouldn't have a
problem with Eeyore and (hopefully) Marmie, but what would they make of a
double 'r'?  (Hopefully they wouldn't teach Whittier....)

At 01:09 PM 2/17/2004 -0500, you wrote:
>Beverly,
>
>Reminds me of another written 'r' in an r-less dialect, "Eeyore" A.A.
>Milne's Pooh stories.  Most American readers and the children they're
>reading to completely miss the intentionally imitative quality of the name
>and it ends up just sounding like a strange made-up name.  My undergrads
>are frequently surprised when they hear about this.
>
>Herb
>
>BTW, "schoolmarm" reminded me of the use of written 'r' (or even double
>'r') to represent r-less New England speech in the old days; it's in Marmie
>of _Little Women_ too, and in Whittier and others.  I suspect it's confused
>generations of readers, as it did me as a kid.