English in USA

[Jonathan Lighter]

If I hadn't "heard" it, the word might just as well have been _Unglish_: "a presumptive stage of development past Inglish."

  JL

FRITZ JUENGLING <juengling_fritz at SALKEIZ.K12.OR.US> wrote:
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Poster: FRITZ JUENGLING
Subject: Re: English in USA
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How can you hear a *phoneme*?
Fritz J

>>> wuxxmupp2000 at YAHOO.COM 11/15/2006 9:42 AM >>>

The *phoneme* I hear, however, is unmistakably / I /.

If Tom has some form of "barred-i" in the initial syllable -
something tending toward
/ E / - he may hear the tiny [ i ]-glide more prominently.

But in terms of phonemes, MW says / I / in both exx.

JL




Laurence Horn wrote:
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Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Laurence Horn
Subject: Re: English in USA
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At 9:05 PM -0500 11/14/06, Alice Faber wrote:
>Laurence Horn wrote:
>>At 6:32 PM -0500 11/14/06, Joel S. Berson wrote:
>>>At 11/14/2006 02:29 PM, Paul Johnston wrote:
>>>>It's not W CT either--or, I'd be very surprised if it was.
>>>
>>>It's not "Eenglish" in NYC, at least not when I was growing up
>>>there. So I too would be surprised if it's W CT, that being NY
>>>Yankee country. :-)
>>>
>>It's not "Eenglish" in South Central CT either, or on www.m-w.com,
>>where the speaker quite clearly renders [INlIS], rhyming with, well,
>>Singlish. Of course, I tested this on a computer in South Central
>>CT; maybe it's different on computers in W CT...
>>
>
>Well, my parents still have dialup, so I doubt I'll be able to try it
>out when I'm at their house for Thanksgiving. Oh, well.

Anyone else hear the www.m-w.com pronunciation as "Eenglish"? Of
course maybe all our ears (and our spectrographs) have been
corrupted...

LH

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