What do pros do ...?

[Scot LaFaive]

I don't know, but I pronounce "Sophia" and "Marie" with "i." I don't
recall hearing many people pronounce them otherwise.

Scot


On Thu, Apr 17, 2008 at 3:47 PM, Charles Doyle <cdoyle at uga.edu> wrote:
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> Poster:       Charles Doyle <cdoyle at UGA.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: What do pros do ...?
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>
> When I have taught the novel _The Color Purple_, my students evince disturbance at my pronunciation of the name of the character Sophia as [so fai @]; they insist on [so fi @] (perhaps thus in the Spielberg movie, which I haven't seen?). Last year, Sophia was one of the 3 or 4 most popular names being given to girl babies in the U.S., many of them (I assume) Hispanic--hence [so fi a].
>
> Has Americans' pervasive awareness of Spanish (even if only from _Westside Story_) or Italian influenced the shift of Maria from [m@ rai @] to [m@ ri @]? Do the Brits still say [m@ rai @]?
>
> --Charlie
> _____________________________________________________________
>
> ---- Original message ----
> >Date: Thu, 17 Apr 2008 12:18:13 -0700
> >From: Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at YAHOO.COM>
> >
> >Did he call the wind "Muh rye uh"?
> >
> >  JL
> >
> >Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
> >
>
> >When they find different pronunciations in, for all practical
> >purposed, exactly the same dialectological environment? For example:
> >
> >I have a cousin named "Marie," who is the niece of my grandparents. My
> >grandfather, a native of Marshall, Texas, pronounced this name as
> >you'd expect: "muh REE" [m@ 'ri]. However, my grandmother, a native of
> >Longview, Texas, who moved to Marshall about five years after marrying
> >my grandfather, always referred to Marie as "muh RYE" [m@ 'raI]. If
> >you stand on your tiptoes, you can see Longview from Marshall. (The
> >term, "mother tongue" having a basis in reality, my brother and I knew
> >Marie as "cudn muh RYE," ignoring our grandfather's pronunciation.)
> >
> >Another example is the pronunciation of the late, great bluesman,
> >Floyd Dixon, whose only recorded compilation is entitled, "Marshall,
> >Texas, Is My Home." In his most famous work, "Dallas Blues, he
> >pronounces Dallas only as [dae at l@s], close to the sE pronunciation.
> >Yet, the Marshall - and probably general Deep-Southern - pronunciation
> >of Dallas is [daeLIs], with the second syllable sounding the same as
> >the first syllable of "listen" ['LIs n] as though the name of the city
> >were spelled "Dall_i_s."
> >
> >-Wilson
> >--
> >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
> >
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