/hy/

[Dennis R. Preston]

Damien,

You mean to say you would drop /h/ prevocalically BEFORE you would
drop in pre /y/? I find this counterintuitive.

dInIa



>dInIs,
>
>You wrote:
>
>'Is the cluster /hy/ reduced to /y/ in lower-status London (England,
>not Kentucky) speech? That is, is "huge" pronounced "yuge"? My handy
>sources are silent on this. Reference?'
>
>I haven't got a reference for you, but as a native I can tell you that
>lower-status London speech does reduce /hy/ to /y/ in 'huge'.  As far as I can
>tell it's part of the general tendency to 'drop your aitches', which I do
>myself when I'm not speaking carefully, though if introspection is worth
>anything I don't actually do it for /hy/, I don't think.
>Interesting.  Perhaps
>there's a hierarchy involved where the commoner /h-/ onsets (/hI-/, /ha-/,
>/ho(w)-/) are (far) more likely to have their aitch dropped than the
>lower-frequency ones?  For example, I can easily visualise a Cockney saying
>
>" 'Ere, 'old this 'uge pot a second.  Careful, it's 'ot!"
>
>and I think that I myself (middle-class, West London, definitely not
>a Cockney)
>could / would drop all those aitches except the one in "'uge".  Speaking very
>casually, I might even drop them all in the same sentence.
>
>[Other 'droppings' have been left in in the example above, for clarity:  'pot'
>and 'hot' would actualy also drop their /t/, so
>/pot/ > /po?/  (/?/ = glottal stop)
>/hot/ > /(?)o?/
>]
>
>But I'm talking about my own idiolect alone, so I'll stop.
>
>Damien Hall
>University of Pennsylvania


--
Dennis R. Preston
University Distinguished Professor
Department of Linguistics and Germanic, Slavic,
        Asian and African Languages
Wells Hall A-740
Michigan State University
East Lansing, MI 48824-1027 USA
Office: (517) 353-0740
Fax: (517) 432-2736