coffin pronunciation

[Lynne Murphy]

Raised in a funeral home in NYS, therefore I pronounce it 'casket'.
('Coffin' is for people who say 'undertaker', 'funeral parlor' and 'wake'
instead of 'funeral director', 'funeral home' and 'calling hours'.)

But I also have a caught/cot distinction and would use the open-o when
obnoxiously 'correcting' people on this matter--which I felt much need to
do as a child...

Lynne

--On Thursday, March 13, 2008 1:53 pm -0500 Matthew Gordon
<gordonmj at MISSOURI.EDU> wrote:

> 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.



Dr M Lynne Murphy
Senior Lecturer in Linguistics and English Language
Arts B135
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QN

phone: +44-(0)1273-678844
http://separatedbyacommonlanguage.blogspot.com

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