pronunciations--previously [no subject]

[Jonathan Lighter]

Larry's right about the current distribution of lie/ lay, and while I do hear the distinction honored by the learned doctors within the English Department, it's probably been decades, not just years, since I heard any "regular/real person" do so.

  But it seems necessary to point out that I grew up in an environment rife with _lay_ for _lie_ (my grandfather was definitely an offender, my grandmother possibly not, my mother surely, my schoolmates probably unanimously). So while professional training has etched the distinction into my own usage, as a somewhat younger, hepper speaker of Inglish I don't react to the violation of the lay/lie rule as strongly as does Larry.

  I think part of the reason for its spread is that context makes confusion of meaning very unlikely.

  JL




Laurence Urdang <urdang at SBCGLOBAL.NET> wrote:
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Poster: Laurence Urdang
Subject: Re: pronunciations--previously [no subject]
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It might seem unpleasant---even rude---to reject remarks like that of Mr. Covarrubias for asking if we should reject Gallicisms, but I am too old to tolerate silly nonsense. Garage is a borrowing, a loanword from French, and not a "Gallicism." Unlike the British, who, owing to generations of wars, despise the French and warp everything they say if they can (and say GAR-idge just for spite), American speakers harbor no such venom and make an honest, though often unsuccessful effort at simulating the pronunciation of the original.
Covarrubias wishes to regard language clinically, without criticism or comment, accepting what he finds, much as the oncologist never tells you that cancer is "bad," then that is his privilege. I too have a clinical hat, which I don when I need to hark back to my B.S. in English Literature and my Ph.D. in General and Comparative Linguistics (Columbia, 1958) or to my (few) years teaching English and linguistics at New York University, in the 1960s.
But I am also possessed of taste and discernment, and I know good art, especially in language, when I see it or hear it. And mispronunciations, among other errata, are not among the perpetrations I enjoy. Others might delight in them, but I, for example, have not heard any speaker of American English use the word lie correctly in the past few years" it is invariably lay (and I don't mean the past tense, either). Such errors in grammar not only interfere with the communication of ideas but they mark the speaker's education level and his lack of sensitivity to the traditional ways in which English works.
You might well say, "Bugger tradition," in which case you may go on saying, "I ain't got no money" (or whatever you're lacking), and it is unlikely that the language police will incarcerate you for using infer for imply or for rhyming homage with fromage. Also, many of your interlocutors won't even notice the difference between your speech and that of an educated speaker. But I will know and, possibly, so might a handful of others whose opinions are just as unimportant to you.
It all come down to art and to how important that is to you. The use of traditional grammar in language is akin in function to that of the appendix; but, like the appendix, when it endangers infecting the surrounding (t)issues, it must be excised.
L. Urdang
Michael H Covarrubias wrote:
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Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Michael H Covarrubias
Subject: pronunciations--previously [no subject]
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Quoting Laurence Urdang :
>
> Give people literacy and the first
> thing they do is turn to spelling
> pronunciation.
> Recently, I have heard albeit,
> alternative, and stalwart all pronounced
> with a first syllable rhyming with pal.

Is the [ae] vowel really a spelling pronunciation of 'al-'? Perhaps in some
dialects of northern Michigan and parts of Canada... The same dialects spoken by
my friends who think I'm being pretentious when I pronounce 'pasta' with an [a].

> And whence comes homage, a word
> borrowed and assimilated as HOM-ij or
> OM-ij, from 12th- or 13th-century French,
> made to rhyme with fromage? What
> pretentious crap!

I suppose AmE 'garage' could sound just as pretentious to some. We're surrounded
by Gallicisms. Shall we bid them all adi...goodbye?

Michael

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