/hy/

[Wilson Gray]

My wife, who's from NE Pennsylvania, says "yuge, Yugh, Yubert," etc.,
as does my mother, who's from NE Texas. My mother also replaces _h_
with glottal stop in words like "humble." My youngest brother, born in
St. Louis and reared in Sacramento, once heard our mutual mother
pronounce "Hubert Humphrey" as [yub at t ?^mpfrI]. Baby brother virtually
split his sides laughing. Having had less experience than I with some
of the more arcane features of Texas English, he was caught completely
off guard.

Some of the more mature readers may recall Humble [?^mb at l] Oil, a unit
of the old Standard Oil, that was headquartered in the company town of
Humble [?^mb at l], Texas.

-Wilson Gray

On May 19, 2005, at 8:23 PM, Beverly Flanigan wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Beverly Flanigan <flanigan at OHIOU.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: /hy/
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
> --------
>
> 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
>