Merkins

[Beverly Flanigan]

At 12:40 PM 10/19/2006, you wrote:
>I don't think changing traditional spelling (tradspel) is doable.  Ted
>Roosevelt in consort with Andrew Carnegie tried and couldn't change a word,
>even through an executive order.  Webster was the last success, at least in
>USA.
>
>So the only thing possible to influence is pronunciation, keeping it
>consistent with tradspel to help learners by maintaining letter sound
>correspondance.  But I see no mechanism to do that except for our schools.
>Now that "phonemic awareness" (Stanovich) is seen to be the "single most
>important attribute exhibited by successful readers" (to paraphrase), there
>may be more action in that area.  I think the trend away from phonics in the
>past for early reading teachers has fostered disparate pronunciations.  I
>advocate for USA English the Writing to Read approach by IBM of the 80's,
>only using truespel, which has no special symbols.
>
>"Merkins".  Is that an Ausy term?

No, no--'Merkins' is a tried and true American English
pronunciation!  Listen to Newt Gingrich (if you can stand to), and you'll
hear him call us "Mer(a)kins" (I'd put a schwa in there).  It's
Philly/Baltimore/east Pennsylvania dialect, and maybe more (NJ? Del?).  The
first syllable is the same as in 'Murray'.  Recall our
Mary/merry/marry/Murray discussion a while back?  Another problem with the
alphabetic principle--people just won't obey it!



>Tom Z
>
>
>>From: RonButters at AOL.COM
>>
>>Do you advocate, then, quite different spelling conventions (more than
>>the=20
>>trivial differences that we now see) for the England, Scotland, Wales,
>>Irela=
>>nd,=20
>>Jamaica, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, India, etc.? Or should they
>>a=
>>ll=20
>>have to speak Merkin? It seems to me that this would make English a MUCH
>>mor=
>>e=20
>>DIFFICULT language to learn as a 2nd language.
>>
>>------------------------------------------------------------
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>
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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org