"Connecticut accent" in the Times

[Laurence Horn]

>On Sep 9, 2004, at 5:20 PM, Beverly Flanigan wrote:
>
>>---------------------- Information from the mail header
>>-----------------------
>>Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>>Poster:       Beverly Flanigan <flanigan at OHIOU.EDU>
>>Subject:      Re: "Connecticut accent" in the Times
>>-----------------------------------------------------------------------
>>--------
>>
>>At 04:44 PM 9/9/2004 -0400, you wrote:
>>
>>>This probably won't shock you, but I distinguish between "aural" and
>>>"oral" primarily by context. Their joint use is rare enough in actual
>>>speech that I've never been motivated to learn to distinguish them in
>>>any other way.
>>>
>>>BTW, didn't everyone, or every college graduate, at least, once upon a
>>>time, pronounce, e.g. "coral" and "Volvo" as [kOr at l] and [vOlvo]?
>>>Nowadays, I seem to hear only [kor at l] and [volvo]. People no longer
>>>identify "Carl Gables" as the loc of the U of Miami or identify the
>>>"volv" of Volvo with the "volv" of "revolver."
>>>
>>>-Wilson Gray
>>
>>This college graduate didn't;  "coral" had [o] and "Volvo" had [O], and
>>both still do.  (What does being a college grad have to do with it,
>>anyway?]
>
>I had in mind speakers of non-standard dialects who grow up in
>isolation from mainstream America. Reading alone can expand such a
>person's vocabulary, but it won't tell that person what the proper
>pronunciation of that vocabulary is. It takes more than a high-school
>diploma to accomplish that. Dictionaries are no help, since their
>pronunciation keys are based on some formal, "standard" dialect
>different from such a person's home dialect. Furthermore, many
>seemingly "obvious" pronunciations that don't need to be looked up can
>turn out to be less than obvious, in the broader world.
>
>In any case, for me, "coral" with closed [o] in the initial syllable is
>"new," in the sense that it wasn't widespread, if it existed at all,
>during the '40's and '50's, when I was in school. Any educated person
>of those years distinguished between "choral" and "coral" in speech as
>well as in writing.

Well, I was in school in that period and made that distinction in
speech at the time, with "choral" rhyming with "oral" (and "aural")
and "coral" with "moral", but after getting to Rochester and turning
all those unrounded (transsyllabic) /ar/s into /Or/s, the only
distinction between "choral" and "coral" I made was orthographic.
(Oh, and semantic.)  But I'm not sure this made me less educated.
(None of these words, then or now, had closed o for me.  Nor did I,
either then or now, distinguish "horse" from "hoarse" phonologically,
but I never took that as a sign of lack of education either.)

larry

L