A nursery rhyme

[Laurence Horn]

>Now that's a first for me!

I also (NYC, born 1945) grew up saying [ar at gan], with primary on the
first and secondary on the last syllable.  I too was ridiculed out of
it, along with my [a] vowel in "forest", "corridor", "moral", etc.
(when I was an undergraduate in Rochester, NY).  And I also natively
rhymed "forehead" and "horrid" as C[ar at d] in that particular rhyme
(which my mother was quite fond of), but I later spelling-corrected
"forehead" to the compound stress version (as in "car-head"), before
all those [a]s mutated into open o's.  So now I'm a
forehead-as-in-whorehead speaker, even though I know it's "supposed
to be" [for at d] as in "horrid" (with an open-o).  And I've switched to
[or at g@n]--still can't get that [i] for the middle vowel ("Orygun").

larry

>The classic pronunciation of those who don't hail from the state is
>[origa:n], and I've also heard [ar at g@n] (both in contrast to the native
>[orig at n]).  But this is the first I've heard of the variant you report
>using, which sounds like a blend of the two "furriner" pronunciations cited
>above.
>
>Peter Mc.
>
>--On Tuesday, July 20, 2004 2:32 PM -0700 Jonathan Lighter
><wuxxmupp2000 at YAHOO.COM> wrote:
>
>>Exactly.  And I used to say /a/ reg /a/ n  {Oregon) too till I was
>>ridiculed out of it.
>
>
>
>*****************************************************************
>Peter A. McGraw       Linfield College        McMinnville, Oregon
>******************* pmcgraw at linfield.edu ************************