stars and ours

[Jonathan Lighter]

For the record, New Yorkers also say [ar(z)] for "our(s)" when they're not saying [a:(z)].

JL

Michael H Covarrubias <mcovarru at PURDUE.EDU> wrote: ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender:       American Dialect Society
Poster:       Michael H Covarrubias
Subject:      Re: stars and ours
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I've heard [ar(z)] more commonly than [aUrz] from Michigan to the Dakotas and
down to Nebraska.

When I was in college in Michigan, everybody that shortened "our Resident
Fellow" to "our R.F" sounded like they were barking and stuttering: [ararEf].

Michael

Quoting Wilson Gray :

>
> It sounds like Philadelphian to me. It's a feature of Chomsky's speech.
>
> -Wilson
>
> > On 5/30/07, James Harbeck  wrote:
> >
> > Just read a poem by a high school student from western Canada that
> > illustrates a standard Canadian pronunciation rather well: it rhymes
> > "stars" with "ours" -- quite reasonably, though I'm not used to
> > seeing those two words matched, perhaps because at least in my
> > generation and earlier ones, we were taught that "ours" was properly
> > pronounced like "hours," even if it almost never really was by us.
> > Evidently even that awareness of [aUrz] as a citation form is
> > disappearing. (This is from a well-educated kid, too -- a gifted
> > student, graduating high school at 16.)
> >
> > That one's also common in much of the US, no?
> >
> > James Harbeck.
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------
> > The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
> >
>
>
> --
> All say, "How hard it is that we have to die"---a strange complaint to
> come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
> -----
>                                               -Sam'l Clemens
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>


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   mcovarru at purdue.edu

   web.ics.purdue.edu/~mcovarru


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