"Drouth"

[James Smith]

Recollections from youth are fuzzy, but I recall being
uncertain as to how to pronounce "drought", and the
eventual realizations that "drought" was what I
pronounced as "drowt" and that "drought' and "drouth"
referred to the same phenomenon.




--- Charles Doyle <cdoyle at UGA.EDU> wrote:

> Some 35 years ago a friend--a learned linguist who
> has since become eminent in the field--heard me
> pronounce "height" with a theta at the end. He
> hypothesized that mine was a "misspelling
> pronunciation"--that I had visualized the word with
> the final "h" and "t" interchanged, and then
> pronounced it accordingly.
>
> In fact, of course, the /-T/ form of "height," like
> the /-T/ form of "drought," has alternated with the
> /-t/ form for many centuries (in both pronunciation
> and spelling). But I have, ever since that
> conversation, been intrigued by the concept of
> "misspelling pronunciations." What might real
> examples be? With most of the words that our
> students ubiquitously misspell, like "occurrence"
> and "separate," pronunciation would not be affected
> (or, rather, the misspelling is based on the
> phonology).
>
> --Charlie
>
_____________________________________________________________
>
>
>
> ---- Original message ----
> >Date: Tue, 6 Nov 2007 09:23:37 -0500
> >From: Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
> >
> >"Drouth" doesn't look odd, Charlie!. It looks like
> an old friend! It's the same with "height." We spell
> it "height," but we pronounce it "high-th." That's
> pure-dee East-Texan! "Drought" is like some weird
> pronunciation-spelling.
> >
> >-Wilson
>
>
------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society -
> http://www.americandialect.org
>


James D. SMITH                 |If history teaches anything
South SLC, UT                  |it is that we will be sued
jsmithjamessmith at yahoo.com     |whether we act quickly and decisively
                               |or slowly and cautiously.

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
http://mail.yahoo.com

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org