duke and dook

[Dennis R. Preston]

Yes, only the onset is so high, so most NYC-area open oh vowels have
an inglide just as you suggest. They do begin quite high, however,
some even as high as 'coot.'

dInIs

>At 10:20 AM -0400 9/23/04, Dennis R. Preston wrote:
>>He (Dick Vitale) is most definitely not a Detroiter (not on
>>linguistic evidence at any rate). His open oh raising (so that
>>'caught' sounds like 'coat' or even 'coot') is much more typical of
>>NYC-area speech.
>
>"Caught" like "coat" or "coot"?  I'm not sure I follow this.  My
>"caught" is very different from my "cot", but it doesn't approach my
>"coat" or "coot".  I suppose it might approach others' "coat" or
>"coot", but I still don't quite get the phonetics here.  Maybe it's a
>diphthong that begins in the same place "coot" does and then breaks
>to a schwa, or something like that?
>
>>PS: He is probably also of souther Italian origins since he has lost
>>the last vowel of his name.
>
>Well, certainly of Italian origins.  I would guess that the final -e
>in Italian names often ends up dropped through anglicization even if
>the family in question was not from the regions in Italy that don't
>pronounce that vowel.  In that respect, a name like "Vitale" or a
>word like "provolone" differs from e.g. "prosciutto", "(a)pizza" or
>"mozzarella", where the final vowel drop *is* attributable to
>dialectal factors in Italian.  Speaking of which, here's a
>dialectologically relevant but not particularly well-informed piece
>from last Sunday's Times on the dropping of those vowels (and related
>matters):
>
>larry
>===========
>
>The New York Times
>  September 20, 2004 Monday
>
>  SECTION: Section B; Column 3; Metropolitan Desk; You Say Prosciutto,
>I Say Pro-SHOOT, And Purists Cringe; Pg. 1
>
>  HEADLINE: Italian-Americans Vary Widely In the Twists Given to the Tongue
>
>  BYLINE: By STACY ALBIN
>
>  Ann Gustafson can discuss food -- especially Italian food. She spent
>many days in the Bronx with her Sicilian grandmother, Sebastiana
>Ceraolo, learning how to cook with
>  mozzarella. Only Mrs. Gustafson did not call it ''mozzarella.'' She
>said ''mozzarell.''
>
>  Wrong?
>
>  Not to many New Yorkers or New Jerseyans. (Doesn't Tony Soprano drop
>his final vowels?) Not to some vendors at the annual Feast of San
>Gennaro in Little Italy this week. But
>  it makes Italian teachers, the purists who love the language just as
>Dante wrote it, wince.
>
>  They suffer prosciutto (pro-SHOOT-toe) becoming pro-SHOOT, calzone
>(cal-TSO-nay) becoming cal-ZONE and pasta e fagioli (PAH-stah eh
>faj-YOH-lee) becoming pasta
>  fasul (fa-ZOOL).
>
>  Outside a butcher shop in Boerum Hill, Brooklyn, recently, Mrs.
>Gustafson said that her language lessons were conducted at the
>kitchen table. ''Everything I know about Italian
>  is food-centric,'' she said, adding that her grandmother was not
>educated and could not spell the words as she wrote down her recipes,
>which ended up half in Italian, half in
>  English.
>
>  Neither grandma nor anyone in her neighborhood, the Morris Park
>section of the Bronx, which had a large enclave of Italian
>immigrants, ever challenged Mrs. Gustafson's
>  pronunciation. And neither did the Italian butcher who pronounced
>his final vowels.
>
>  ''The Italians -- they don't correct,'' Mrs. Gustafson, 34, said.
>''They're not like the French, who will correct you.''
>
>  Stefano Albertini, who is the director of New York University's
>Italian cultural center, Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimo, agreed.
>''Generally speaking, Italians are rather grateful to
>  anyone who speaks in Italian,'' he said. ''They think Italian comes
>in so many varieties and accents.''
>
>  In fact, in some parts of Italy, the dropping of final vowels is
>common. Restaurantgoers and food shoppers in the United States ended
>up imitating southern and northern dialects,
>  where speakers often do not speak their endings, Professor Albertini said.
>
>  Liliana Dussi, a retired New York district director for the Berlitz
>language schools, said many first- and second-generation Italians
>whose ancestors immigrated to the United
>  States before World War I were informally taught Italian expressions
>and the names of food, some of which has ended up part of everyday
>language in New York, New Jersey and
>  Connecticut.
>
>  And Gregory Pell, an assistant professor at Hofstra University who
>teaches Italian, said that because of the way double consonants were
>spoken, such as the double ''t'' in
>  manicotti, Americans might not clearly hear the last ''ee'' sound.
>When New Yorkers drop their endings, he said, ''it's become a new
>word and its own version.''
>
>  Professor Albertini, speaking from an educated, native Italian's
>perspective, said ''it makes us cringe sometimes at the beginning,
>but we get used to it.''
>
>  Ms. Dussi said that she did hear some lovely Italian spoken in New
>York, which she attributed to widespread use of computerized language
>lessons and an emphasis on
>  education. American universities teach the standardized version,
>which is based on 13th-century Florentine vernacular and
>pronunciations.
>
>  And only once in her 20 years in working for Berlitz did a student
>specifically ask to learn a dialect, Ms. Dussi said. That student
>worked as an agent for the F.B.I. and wanted to
>  speak like a Sicilian.
>
>  The rest of us can improve by following some simple rules. ''In
>proper Italian, you always pronounce every letter and the double
>consonants,'' Ms. Dussi said. ''The only letter
>  you don't pronounce is the silent h.''
>
>  That is, pronounce all final vowels, including the final sound in
>manicotti. For the word bella, which means beautiful and contains a
>double consonant, the correct pronunciation is
>  ''bel-la'' not ''bel-a,'' she said.
>
>  Within the 20 regions in Italy, 10 to 18 main dialects are currently
>spoken, Professor Pell said, and if they are broken down by their
>nuances, the count could go into the
>  hundreds. Historically, each dialect is virtually a different language.
>
>  Joseph Trovato, who owns an Italian restaurant in Brooklyn, said
>that he understood dialects from Bari, Sicilian and Naples but that
>when his son, Lenny, studied Italian in
>  college, he could not help him: ''I didn't understand what he was saying.''
>
>  Among the class conscious, anything less than standardized Italian
>is sneered at, Professor Albertini said. But many say it is more of a
>personal choice when to speak in dialect.
>  In Ms. Dussi's native region of Istria, now a part of Croatia, the
>teacher who taught standard Italian in school would speak in the
>local tongue once the final school bell rang.
>
>  Some find it easier to start with the standard. ''If I speak with an
>Italian guy who is a stranger, it's not in a dialect,'' said Sal
>Chimienti, a member of a Brooklyn Italian social
>  club, Mola Club. ''It's in perfect Italian.'' Although Mr. Chimienti
>said he understood almost all Italian dialects, when his wife, Mary,
>a native of Naples, was alive, they spoke to
>  each other in English.
>
>  Tony Affronti, who owns Los Paisanos Meat Market in Brooklyn, said
>he made no attempt to teach his English-speaking customers the proper
>Italian pronunciations. Likewise,
>  some of them do not even attempt to pronounce the names of the
>Italian meats lining the showcase.
>
>  ''They look and say, 'What's this over here?''' he said, imitating
>the flick of their head.
>
>  As for the linguistically challenged, who mangle ''prosciutto,'' he
>said, ''as soon as they open their mouths, we know exactly what they
>want.''