coffin pronunciation

[Baker, John]

        I distinguish cot/caught, and I've spent the last few minutes
saying "coffin" aloud and listening to myself.  The vowel sounds are the
same, but the f sound in "coffin" is slightly different from the f sound
in "coughin'" - more emphatic, somehow.  The lower lip placement is not
quite the same.  Can anyone explain to me what's going on with that?


John Baker


-----Original Message-----
From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf
Of Scot LaFaive
Sent: Thursday, March 13, 2008 3:09 PM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Re: coffin pronunciation

>My question for those of you who maintain the distinction between /a/
>and
open-o: Do you all have /a/ for 'coffin'?

I distinguish between "cot" and "caught" and I say "coffin" with an
open-o.

Scot

On Thu, Mar 13, 2008 at 1:53 PM, Matthew Gordon <gordonmj at missouri.edu>
wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Matthew Gordon <gordonmj at MISSOURI.EDU>
> Subject:      coffin pronunciation
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> ---------
>
> I was listening to a podcast featuring 2 thirty-something New Yorkers.

> One of them pronounced 'coffin' with an open-o, and the other
> ridiculed him, saying something about how it's not 'coughin'.
>
> My question for those of you who maintain the distinction between /a/
> and
> open-o: Do you all have /a/ for 'coffin'? I'm wondering whether this
> is another example of a word that varies in its phonemic assignment.
>
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