R r

[Jonathan Lighter]

Like my Southern students, I say "R."

I say "R-A."

R-A-G-G-M-O-P-P

RAGGMOPP!!!!

Doo-doo-doo-DAH-dee-ah-dah!!!!

Sorry.  It just came over me. (But I've never heard "arra.")

JL


"Rachel E. Shuttlesworth" <rshuttle at BAMA.UA.EDU> wrote:
---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: "Rachel E. Shuttlesworth"
Organization: University of Alabama Libraries
Subject: Re: R r
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I heard this pronunciation from several of my BE-speaking middle school
teachers (probably in their 70s now), natives of Alabama.
Rachel

Wilson Gray wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender: American Dialect Society
> Poster: Wilson Gray
> Subject: R r
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> As a child, I learned the name of the letter "R r" as [ar@]. (All of
> the other letters had the local version of their standard names.) This
> might be spelled "orra" (or "arra"?). I once heard the late Senator
> Edward Brooke (R) of Massachusetts, who was a native of Virginia,
> pronounce the call-letters of a radio station, WROR, as
> "dubya-orra-oh-orra." I've been wondering, given that a native Texan
> and a native Virginian both used this pronunciation, whether this usage
> is pan-Southern or whether the fact that we both used it was mere
> coincidence or, perhaps, a feature only of BE. How say ye, fellow
> Southrons?
>
> -Wilson Gray

--
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Rachel E. Shuttlesworth
CLIR Post-Doctoral Fellow
University of Alabama Libraries
Box 870266, Tuscaloosa, Alabama 35487-0266
Office: 205.348.4655/ Fax:205.348.8833
rachel.e.shuttlesworth at ua.edu

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