The changes just keep on coming.

[Wilson Gray]

My God, Peter! I'm one of those people. I remember the pronunciation
"Yaki-maw." But I interpreted that -"aw" as being the same as the
BE/SE "-aw" in pronunciations like "Omuh-haw" for "Omaha." so, I've
always made a point of saying "Omah[a]" and, likewise, "Yakim[a]."

And then there are pronunciations like "Joshuway, Ioway" for "Joshua, Iowa."

-Wilson

On 10/20/05, Peter A. McGraw <pmcgraw at linfield.edu> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "Peter A. McGraw" <pmcgraw at LINFIELD.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: The changes just keep on coming.
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On the topic of observed language evolution, though a totally different
> example:
>
> There are a number of Indian-derived place names around the Northwest that
> are (or were, in the good old days when people spoke correctly) pronounced
> with a final -aw.  The only examples that come to mind at the moment are
> Yakima, Washington, and the Umpqua River in Oregon, but there are others.
> I first noticed, to my annoyance, that transplants who had moved here to
> become local TV newscasters were pronouncing these names with a
> zero-stressed schwa on the end instead of the "correct" secondary-stressed
> -aw.
>
> I happened to think of this during a college trip with two colleagues of
> about my age and some students, and asked them how they pronounced the name
> of that city in Washington.  My contemporaries (both long-ago transplants)
> shared my -aw pronunciation, but the students (all of traditional student
> age, all from the Northwest) uniformly said "Yakimah" (same stress
> pattern).  So we seem to have a progression here, and no doubt the "dang
> furriner" TV newscasters will win out in the end.
>
> Peter Mc.
>
> --On Tuesday, October 18, 2005 2:50 PM -0400 Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
> wrote:
>
> > I've just heard someone say, "I love my boss depends on me."
> >
> > In my lost youth, people said things like,
> >
> > "I love the fact that my boss depends on me."
> >
> > With the passage of time, I noticed that people had begun to say things
> > like,
> >
> > "I love it that my boss depends on me."
> >
> > Since this is the way that it's said in a lot of foreign languages, I
> > forced myself to become accustomed to it and even spoke that way
> > myself, from time to time.
> >
> > Then people began to say, "I love that my boss depends on me."
> >
> > Well, language changes. What can you do? So, I went with the flow.
> >
> > But, "I love my boss depends on me"?!
> >
> > As the song said, "No! I can't go for that." Not that it'll do any good.
> > Sigh!
> >
> > -Wilson Gray
>
>
>
> ***************************************************************************
> Peter A. McGraw       Linfield College        McMinnville, Oregon
> ******************* pmcgraw at linfield.edu ****************************
>


--
-Wilson Gray