Different dialects, same error

[Wilson Gray]

On Sep 4, 2004, at 9:05 PM, Beverly Flanigan wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Beverly Flanigan <flanigan at OHIO.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: Different dialects, same error
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> At 04:41 PM 9/4/2004 -0400, you wrote:
>> On Sep 4, 2004, at 1:58 PM, Douglas G. Wilson wrote:
>>
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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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>>> --
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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
>
> Johnny Mack Brown is the only way I ever saw the guy named.  Are you
> sure
> he was really McBrown?
>

No, not at all. What I was getting at is that, as a result of a
phonological rule of BE that causes Mc/Mac always to be pronounced as
[maek], as in "M[ae]c Cracklin," "M[ae]c Arthur," I mistakenly
*assumed* that McBrown, pronounced M[ae]c Brown in BE, was his surname.
That is, there is no difference in pronunciation between "Johnny
McBrown" and "Johnny Mack Brown." It was only when I saw his name
spelled out as "Johnny Mack Brown" on a relatively-recent TV special on
movie cowboys that I finally learned that my 55-year-old assumption was
wrong. In other words, speaking the "wrong" dialect can, to a minor
extent, hinder learning and lead to misunderstanding.

-Wilson Gray