/hy/

[Laurence Horn]

At 11:40 PM -0400 5/19/05, Wilson Gray wrote:
>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.
>
It's those pronunciations (besides the semantics) that make it seem
plausible that "eating umble pie" (deer innards?) would have turned
into "eating humble pie".  Me, I'm a New Yorker, but I've never
merged "you" with "Hugh".

L