saying "ah" for "awe"

[Paul Johnston]

Dear Tom,
As far as the distribution, the COT=CAUGHT merger is a phenomenon of
vowel change that linguists have explored a lot.  It occurs in
several areas:  (1) parts of Eastern New England; (2) Western
Pennsylvania and adjoining areas; (3) most of the West--though in
some cases, the vowels are just very close, not actually merged;  (4)
some areas adjoining Canada, where the merger is usual; and (5) a
growing tail of dialects running from Central Ohio through the center
of the country connecting (3) and (2).  In (1), (3), most of (5), and
sometimes  (4), it tends to be the COT vowel that survives, though
(1)'s COT vowel sounds like a lot  of American's CAUGHT vowel.
OK--people have been saying what you've said about confusing word
meanings and so on for at least 400 years.  I know of grammarians in
the early 17th century on how disgusting it was to pronounce tail and
tale, or main and mane, or road and rowed, or no and know the same.
(The spelling shows that they were once different, and they still are
in a number of British dialects).  Yet we accept their merger today
as Standard, and  learn their spelling individually,  because our
phonics rules don't quite work here.  Same with knight and night,
rights and rites, and so on.  No one confuses their meaning because
these words are not spoken in isolation--they are in sentences, and
these sentences in texts and conversations.  So we can determine the
meaning by the words they are around--their context.  So, although it
may make it harder for kids to learn to spell using phonics alone,
our language still functions--and if there is confusion, you can
always ask what was meant.

Paul Johnston
On Sep 30, 2006, at 11:39 AM, Tom Zurinskas wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Tom Zurinskas <truespel at HOTMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      saying "ah" for "awe"
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> ---------
>
> I'm hearing the phoneme "ah" substituted for "awe" all the time
> now.  What's
> going on.  Is it a fad or what?  Not good.  It gets away from
> phonic form
> consistency and creates words that sound alike but are spelled
> differently,
> mean different things, and initially were meant to be spoken
> differently,
> like "cot" and "caught", "tock" and "talk".
>
> How is it in your neck of the woods?
>
> Tom Z
>
>
> See truespel.com and the 4 truespel books at authorhouse.com.
>
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