ah/ awe

[Tom Zurinskas]

>From: Beverly Flanigan <flanigan at OHIO.EDU>

>Give it up, Tom--it won't work!  The scholarly research by linguists on all
>this is very clear and has been cited by many of us.

I'm sorry.  Don't know what I should be giving up.  Is it the quest to have
linguists unite in trying to get folks to say "awe" for forms "au" and "aw"
which in recent tradition were spoken "awe"?  Basically it's a quest to
retain what we can of the alphabetic principal.  This is important for
language learners.  Studies have been interpreted to show that it's the
deviation from the alphabetic principal that is "causing" 50% of the
dyslexia in Englsih.

>However, I might use your poem as a diagnostic test, if I may, to see who
>merges and in which words; for the same speaker, some of these words may go
>to the "ah" sound and others may not.  For example, in another test I use,
>"balk" may have 'aw' while "balm" has 'ah', for the same speaker (myself
>included).  Go figure.
>
>Beverly

Enjoy using the poem, Beverly,  Try out this test for me.

For a person that says "ah" for "awe" for a particular word ask him/her if
he/she can hear the difference when you say that word both ways.  I predict
for native USA speakers brought up on TV and radio, that they will say yes,
they hear the difference.  Then ask them to speak the word using both ways.
I'll bet they can do that too.  Then ask them why they use "ah" and they'll
say That's the way we say it around their neck of the woods.  You might want
to use the same word each time and a recording to standardize the stimulus.


Tom Z

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