laud/loud

[Matthew Gordon]

Sounds like she was simply unfamiliar with the word and not a phonological
issue at all, unless she's from Pittsburgh in which case [laUd] for <laud>
could be hypercorrection inspired by their famous monophthongization of
(aw).


On 3/13/08 1:03 PM, "Herb Stahlke" <hfwstahlke at GMAIL.COM> wrote:

> An MSNBC newsreader just talked about people being [laUd at d] for good deeds.
> I suspect her writer had written <lauded> and she didn't recognize the word,
> at all or at that moment, on the teleprompter.  Would an educated
> twenty-something not know the <laud>/<loud> contrast?  I couldn't tell from
> her speech at the moment whether she has the low back vowel merger.
> Charitably, it could have been a slip.
>
> Herb
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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