Different dialects, same error

[Beverly Flanigan]

At 10:47 PM 9/4/2004 -0400, you wrote:
>On Sep 4, 2004, at 9:05 PM, Beverly Flanigan wrote:
>
>. . .
>>>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

Gotcha.  And I agree.