Different dialects, same error

[Beverly Flanigan]

At 04:41 PM 9/4/2004 -0400, you wrote:
>On Sep 4, 2004, at 1:58 PM, Douglas G. Wilson wrote:
>
>>---------------------- Information from the mail header
>>-----------------------
>>Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>>Poster:       "Douglas G. Wilson" <douglas at NB.NET>
>>Subject:      Re: Different dialects, same error
>>-----------------------------------------------------------------------
>>--------
>>
>>>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

Johnny Mack Brown is the only way I ever saw the guy named.  Are you sure
he was really McBrown?