Fricative voicing in *houses*

[Wilson Gray]

Dialects are strange, to paraphrase the Lizard King. I'm with your lady wife
WRT to "blou[s]" for both the noun and the verb. I learned "blou[s]" for the
article of clothing as a child in Texas, ca. late '30's-early '40's. In the
Army, ca. late '50's-early '60's, we spoke of "blou[s]ing one's boots," even
though it was the bottoms of the legs of our fatigue pants or our field
pants that we blou[s]ed and and not our boots. The design of both the boots
and the pants have changed, since those days, so what the troops are wearing
nowadays won't help you to visualize what it was like in the old
"black-shoe" Army. Ironically, in my day, we spoke of the old "brown-shoe"
Army of WWII and Korea.

-Wilson

On 5/10/06, Charles Doyle <cdoyle at uga.edu> wrote:
>
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Charles Doyle <cdoyle at UGA.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: Fricative voicing in *houses*
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Not only does my wife, from the Chicago area, keep the /s/
> of "house" unvoiced in the plural.  She also pronounces
> the "s" of "blouse" as /s/, which sounds odd to my Southern
> ear (actually, I have two of those).  I don't recall ever
> hearing her use "blouse" as a verb.
>
> --Charlie
>
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