old hat

[Wilson Gray]

Thanks to arnold and Beth, I have seen the light! Or a glimmer of it, at
least. For years, I've wondered why "your(s)" is very often, if not always,
spelled "yore(s)" in eye-dialect, as though there was something
non-standard/non-Northern about that pronunciation. If I understand arnold
correctly, the answer is obvious: [yor(z)]  _is_  a
non-standard/non-Northern pronunciation of "yours," made up of
r-less-Southern [yo(z)] with corrective [r] suffixed/inserted. Likewise,
[yiwr] is merely eye-dialect pan-Southern "yew" with an [r] suffixed. So,
"your" falls together with "(days of) yore" and "you're" falls together with
"ewer."

As for Beth's claim that she doesn't distinguish between "your" and
"you're," that's easily explained by what one might call "auditory
expectation."  Back in the '60's, when I was in Amsterdam, I noticed that
the Dutch reversed the vowels of, e.g. "bat" and "bet," pronouncing "bat" as
"bet," but pronouncing "bet" as "bat." The solution is that Dutch has only
one E-sound, which happens be lower than the English E-sound, but higher
than the English A-sound. In both cases, the Dutch speaker has used only his
single E-sound. However, the naive Wilsonian ear hears a sound too low to be
English [E], on the one hand, and interprets it as English [A], but said ear
also hears a sound too high to be English [A], on the other hand, and
interprets it as English [E].

-Wilson



On 3/3/06, Arnold M. Zwicky <zwicky at csli.stanford.edu> wrote:
>
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "Arnold M. Zwicky" <zwicky at CSLI.STANFORD.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: old hat
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On Mar 3, 2006, at 2:46 PM, Bethany K. Dumas wrote:
>
> > On Fri, 3 Mar 2006, Wilson Gray wrote:
> >
> >> Likewise, there are people who pronounce "your" as though it was
> >> spelled
> >> "you're" and who pronounce "you're" as though it was spelled "your."
> >
> > To the best of my knowledge, I have ALWAYS pronounced them the
> > same. And I
> > do not recall hearing others pronounce them differently.
>
> that's my belief about my own pronunciation.  but... from two
> american dictionaries:
>
> NOAD2 has two pronunciations for both, with lax U and with open-o,
> but in different orders (open-o first for "your", lax U first for
> "you're" -- possibly wilson has open-o for "your" and either U or u
> or both for "you're"); meanwhile, "you'd", "you'll" and "you've" have
> only the tense u of "you" listed (i have lax variants for all of
> these, and i think i use the lax versions much more than the tense ones)
>
> AHD4 gives all three versions for "your" (in the order: lax U, open-
> o, tense u), but *only* lax U for "you're"; meanwhile, "you'd" and
> "you've" have only tense u, while "you'll" has tense u and lax U, in
> that order
>
> i fear that looking at more dictionaries would only make the
> situation murkier.
>
> arnold (zwicky at csli.stanford.edu)
>
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