Different dialects, same error

[Wilson Gray]

On Sep 4, 2004, at 1:58 PM, Douglas G. Wilson wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "Douglas G. Wilson" <douglas at NB.NET>
> Subject:      Re: Different dialects, same error
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> --------
>
>> As a New Yorker, I'm definitely in the group that
>> distinguishes -in- from -en-, unlike you and dInIs, and like your
>> friend, I was a bit puzzled about Windy as a name.  But that's
>> definitely what I heard, and unlike what happens when I'm listening
>> to those who neutralize, I really did hear it as Windy in the song
>> and not Wendy.
>
> I distinguish /In/ from /En/ but many didn't where I grew up and I
> wouldn't
> have any trouble understanding "pin" for "pen" etc. based on context.
> To
> make this "Windy" into "Wendy" however never occurred to me for an
> instant:
> I took the name in the song to be an odd nickname and I've never
> wondered
> about it at all. Why? I suppose that those persons who would pronounce
> "Wendy" the same as "windy" would (in my perhaps limited experience)
> have
> other characteristic pronunciations which I didn't hear in this song.
>
> I hear e.g. /wIndi h&z stOrmi ajz/. If I heard something in the
> direction
> of /wIndi hEj at z stO(r)mi az/ (more southern, I suppose) maybe I'd take
> the
> first word as "Wendy". Or maybe I'm just imagining things.
>
> -- Doug Wilson
>

It's interesting that y'all heard the name of the song correctly. I'm
pretty sure that my friend and I were both tripped up by what we
_thought_ we knew about English: that no one would be named "Windy."
Therefore, the name must be "Wendy."

Another case that I can offer is the following. In BE, the
Irish/Scottish onomastic prefixes tend to be sounded fully in all
environments. So, MacArthur is pronounced "M[ae]c Arthur," McLain is
pronounced "M[ae]c Lain," etc. I grew up in the heyday of the horse
opera. A well-known movie cowboy of the day was a guy named Johnny
McBrown, who, like Gene Autry and Roy Rogers, always used his own name.
About ten years ago, I was watching a TV history of horse opera whose
voice-over noted that Johnny McBrown, a native Alabamian, had broken
into the movies after winning a bit of fame as an Olympic swimmer. Then
one of his old movie posters was shown: "[Some western movie title]
starring Johnny _Mack_ Brown!!"

-Wilson Gray