rawk (1987)

[David Bowie]

From:    "Dennis R. Preston" <preston at MSU.EDU>

: David,

: I always knew there was something I really liked about you. Now I
: know what it is: your open oh/ah distribution before /g/ is exactly
: the same as mine! Maybe I am not the last living speaker of Standard
: American English (SAE 10-W-40, the norm) after all!

Well, i am younger, so i probably don't speak it *perfectly*--i don't have
the horse-hoarse distinction, after all. Mine must be SAE 5W30.

: But, I wonder if the notorious variability you mention might not be
: explained by a word frequency/early learning appeal. Every one of
: your (and my) open oh words (hog, frog, dog, log...) is a relatively
: high-frequency and early-learned word; every ah word is a relatively
: low-frequency and later-learned word (jog, cog, blog...). In my case,
: for example, since "smog" is right in the middle (middle frequency,
: learned only a little earlier than some of the ah words), I don't
: like either pronunciation.

I remember having trouble with this one--i've finally settled on open-o.

"Jog", FWIW, is another one i had trouble with growing up, though in that
case i settled on ah.

(And yeah, i'm pretty definite about my categorization of <og> words--if i
were writing rhyming poetry, "hog" most certainly could *not* rhyme with
"cog".)

: How do you deal with some of the other historical open oh producers?
: ah before /f/ is really hard for me to get, even in late learned
: words (e.g., Hoffa). I remember a "Poff" family where I grew up, and
: I think we ah-ed them, but it hits my ear funny even today.

"Hoffa" is clearly open-o for me. Let's see: cough, trough, &c...Yep,
consistently open-o. There may be an exception out there, but i can't think
of one.



David Bowie                                         http://pmpkn.net/lx
    Jeanne's Two Laws of Chocolate: If there is no chocolate in the
    house, there is too little; some must be purchased. If there is
    chocolate in the house, there is too much; it must be consumed.