vase vs. vase

[Jonathan Lighter]

My wife, also a New Yorker, seems always to say /ves/.  She was told about 1970 that a /vaz/ cost more than $25.  She too thinks of it as a joke.

Maybe the notion of pronunciation related to price developed as a jest; when it was publicized, many people accepted it as true while others did not.  Of the "believers," a certain percentage (few, I would guess) actually alter their native pronunciation to accord with the "rule."  Others pass on the information as a "fact" of interest without consistently altering their own pronunciation.

It may even be that some dealers in vases deliberately changed their pronunciation on the  assumption that /vaz/ sounded more "English" and therefore elegant and the sort of thing one would say to a high-toned customer in the market for expensive objets d'art.

There must be a name for these phenomena. I mean besides "flattery" and "gullibility."

JL

Beverly Flanigan <flanigan at OHIOU.EDU> wrote:
---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Beverly Flanigan
Subject: Re: Collegiate "geek" in the '70s (was Re: Synonymy avoidance)
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Doesn't anyone watch "Antiques Roadshow"?!

At 11:50 AM 3/11/2005, you wrote:
>Larry Horn:
> >and similarly the classic [veys] (< $200) /[vaz] (> $200) example
> >(where the latter is often taken to be more costly)
>
>Jonathan Lighter:
> >I've always said /vaz/ even though I can't afford any.
> >
> >Didn't this "distinction" really start out as a joke ? Does anybody(except
> >a few uptight linguists) really observe it ?
>
>AFAIK, Labov was serious when he mentioned a woman in New York having that
>distinction. I tracked down the exact reference: it's in _Sociolinguistic
>Patterns_, p. 251 (in a footnote).
>
>
>--Ben Zimmer


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