/hy/

[Beverly Flanigan]

And isn't this still common in many New Yorkers too?  But only before /y/
(or /j/), of course.

At 07:29 PM 5/19/2005, you wrote:
>WRT your original question, Tollfree reports /h/ deletion in huge, et al.
>as an option for Southeast London speakers in her contribution to the
>_Urban Voices_ collection (Foulkes and Docherty, 1999). She also notes
>that Sivertson found "only /j/ for /hj/" in _Cockney Phonology_ (1960).
>
>
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: American Dialect Society on behalf of Dennis R. Preston
>Sent: Thu 5/19/2005 2:56 PM
>To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>Subject:      Re: /hy/
>
>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