film=fillum

[Douglas G. Wilson]

At 10:15 AM 5/28/2005, you wrote:
> >>There aren't many words with /lm/ --which is a pretty marginal cluster
> >>in English (elm is often ellum, too).  A lot of the dialects that gave
> >>birth to American English--Scots and Southwestern English for two,
> >>disallow this cluster.  We inherited that, so we, like those dialects,
> >>break the cluster up by inserting a vowel in between.  The same dialects
> >>also tend to disallow /ln/ as in kiln, > kill.
> >
> >Is this epenthesis /lm/ > /l at m/ really universal in Scots, even at the end
> >of a monosyllable? My little "Concise Scots Dictionary" doesn't show it (it
> >does show "kiln"/"kill"/"kell" /kIl/), and at a glance neither does the SND.
> >
> >It is said that this is common in Irish English too. Several such
> >epentheses are conventional in Gaelic according to my limited
> >understanding, which might could influence Scots and Irish English, and I
> >suppose maybe Southwestern English might be influenced by Cornish in
> >parallel fashion?
> >
> >If some US-ans ("we" in the above) inherited this from Scots etc., why
> >didn't I, or most of my US-an acquaintances? Is it regional in the US?
> >
> >-- Doug Wilson
>~~~~~~~~~~
>Elwy Yost, longtime host of TVOntario's "Saturday Night at the Movies,"
>always said "fillum," which suggests a Welsh connection also.
>A. Murie

Stupid me, I took "southwestern" to be a little too restrictive probably.
Of course Welsh would probably have a bigger influence overall than Cornish
or Manx or whatever.

Another word for this vowel-epenthesis is _anaptyxis_, apparently. Isn't
that a cute word? Maybe not used every day by some of us laymen. [Sometimes
pronounced "anapatickasis"? (^_^)]

-- Doug Wilson