eggcorn

[Paul Johnston]

Short e tensing--only before /g/ though--extends as far north as Grand
Rapids, Muskegon, and Kalamazoo, MI, so it's not just in  the North
Midlands.  Never heard it in NW NJ (I'm from Morris County), but I know
the dialect is somewhat transitional.  I don't have any of the pre-/l/
mergers, but my postvocalic /l/ is a velarized vowel (and I have
contrasts like vow = [vaeu] vs. vowel = [VAu], where [A] is a low-back
vowel.   Mirror and nearer rhyme, though this may be due to too many
years in the Midwest; I have a central V1 in both coat and boot, but NOT
a front one; I've heard the same from many NYC speakers, so at least
this hint of the Southern vowel shift crawls up the East Coast that far.

I've heard "eya" (triphthong) type realizations in EC PA (around
Allentown) in many tensing environments for short "a", often where many
Southerners would have a similar triphthong.  You might get fill/feel
and pool/pull mergers there too.

Paul Johnston
On Thursday, May 12, 2005, at 10:24  PM, Benjamin Zimmer wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail
> header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Benjamin Zimmer <bgzimmer at RCI.RUTGERS.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: eggcorn
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On Thu, 12 May 2005 20:54:35 -0400, Beverly Flanigan
> <flanigan at OHIOU.EDU>
> wrote:
>
>> I oversimplify.  Tensing of the lax high and mid front vowels and the
>> high back is common; hence 'poosh', 'feesh', and 'speycial' (and Rex's
>> 'meyzure' and 'pleysure').  These are South Midland/South; listen to
>> Chuck Hagel and even Charles Grassley.
>
> Also, I believe the North Midland region has some tensing of "short e",
> but typically only before /g/ (as in 'eyg', 'leyg', 'peyg', 'beyg').
> This
> can be heard as far east (and as far north) as northwest New Jersey.
> (For
> such speakers, "eggcorn" is at its eggcorniest, since it's nearly
> homophonous with "acorn".)
>
>> They're spreading westward, I believe, so I'm not
>> surprised that a Utahn has them also, though younger people and uppity
>> college types might try to control them.
>
> The Wikipedia article on American article suggests that tensing of
> short e
> is indeed a salient feature of the Utah region:
>
> -----
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_English/Standard_American_English#Utah
> Utah:
> * diphthongization of [E] as [EI]: "egg" and "leg" pronounced "ayg" and
> "layg", "leisure" and "pleasure" pronounced "layzhur" and "playzhur".
> -----
>
>
> --Ben Zimmer
>