"Blawg"

[Laurence Horn]

At 10:17 AM -0500 12/31/07, Joel S. Berson wrote:
>At 12/31/2007 01:06 AM, Paul Johnston wrote:
>>I didn't see your posting before posting my own, but we're on the
>>same effete page, I guess.  How would you pronounce "Hauppauge", Long
>>Island?  That does rhyme with dog for me.
>
>BOTH "au's like "dog"?  For me, only the "aug".
>
>>One exception to the "og"
>>rule--quahog.  Probably because, to me, it's a New England word,
>>learned late in life.  I'd pronounce it to rhyme with dog rather than
>>hog.  Nothing else though.
>
>I pronounce it to rhyme with "hog".  (Although these are not
>credentials, I grew up in New York City and went to Boston at
>20.)  So for me rhymes with "dog" are still scant -- "Hauppauge",
>"blawg", "augh" (as in, I think, Charlie Brown).
>
I think any <-aug> of <-awg> word would rhyme with "dog" for me; not
just the ones you mention, but "dawg" (if I were reading one of those
signs at the U. of Georgia), or (as brought up earlier on this
thread) Tolkien's "smaug" (bad dragon in The Hobbit), but of course
not "smog".  I think this would be confirmed if I were given a word
list of made up entries ("chog", "chaug", etc.).  That's why "quahog"
and "Hauppauge" differ in their last syllables, not because I've
heard them non-rhyme but because I'm "sounding them out" according to
my rules.

LH

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