[hw-] v. [w]

[Benjamin Zimmer]

On 8/1/07, Beverly Flanigan <flanigan at ohio.edu> wrote:
>
> [David A. Daniel wrote:]
> >
> > [Scott LaFaive wrote:]
> >
> > >I don't have an [h] anywhere near my [w]'s (Wisconsin dialect), so I don't
> > >even know what this sounds like. Any good sound files for this?
> >
> >Bob Dylan, Lay Lady Lay. He could blow out a candle with his "...stay with
> >your man a hhhhhhhwile"
>
> As Peter Trudgill pointed out in a 1983 paper ("Acts of Conflicting
> Identity"), Dylan tried to use a Midland/Appalachian accent in his early
> songs, often with hypercorrection.  Hence "a while" was [e hwail] (or maybe
> even [e hwal]?) and "the times they are [e tSendZiN]."  As a Minnesotan,
> Dylan would have never used [hw] in his own persona, and I wonder if he
> didn't drop it in his later songs too?

"Lay Lady Lay" wasn't that early of a song in the Dylan oeuvre -- it's from
1969, off the "Nashville Skyline" album (his 9th album in 8 years). I don't
recall what Trudgill has to say on the matter, but my sense is that Dylan
didn't lose his singing accent in the way that the Beatles and the Stones
eventually gave up on Americanized phonology as Trudgill describes.


--Ben Zimmer

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