phonological features; was What's in a Name? The Black Panthers in Israel

[Mark Mandel]

On Fri, Jul 4, 2008 at 3:32 PM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:

> Marc Velasco wrote:
>
> "[Yer] gonna hurt yourself.
>
> "And I imagine I'd pronounce the yourself as [yerself] in both cases."
>
> I agree with him, here, but I don't understand the claim that he
> "read[s] [yuwr] as [yer] ..." "Hears 'you were' as [yer],' perhaps?

Marc, do you realize that when we use brackets* we intend an
approximation of formal phonetic notation, not just some general kind
of "sound spelling"? [yer] is not the same as the fast colloquial
pronunciation often written as "yer" or "y'r", rhyming with "her";
[yer] would rhyme with many pronunciations of "their" or "hair".

* or slashes, with a distinction that I don't need to explain if you
already know, and which this footnote is too short to contain if you
don't

--
Mark Mandel

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