Obama and indefinite articles

[ronbutters at AOL.COM]

Arnold is right that "a international" is a common dialect feature and certainly not a "disfluency." However, I disagree with Arnold when he says that the absence of /n/ (actually, the use of a glottal stop instead of /n/) before vowels is "not likely for someone with obama's linguistic history." This is common among speakers in the midwest, even educated speakers such as Obama and myself." I'd expect to hear it commonly in Hawaii as well as Kansas and Illinois. Dialectally, Obama seems to be an educated Midwesterner, with little or no AAVE.
------Original Message------
From: Arnold Zwicky
Sender: ADS-L
To: ADS-L
ReplyTo: ADS-L
Sent: Nov 7, 2008 6:19 PM
Subject: Re: [ADS-L] Obama and indefinite articles

On Nov 7, 2008, at 3:11 PM, Randy Alexander wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Randy Alexander <strangeguitars at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: Obama and indefinite articles
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On Sat, Nov 8, 2008 at 4:04 AM, Bradley A. Esparza <baesparza at gmail.com
> >wrote:
>
>> Watching President-elect Obama speak I just heard him say
>> "....*a*international....", not 'an'. <ay>
>> Bradley A. Esparza
>
>
> That's a pretty common disfluency, akin to saying /Ti/ in front of a
> word
> that starts with a consonant.  Both of these are found in the speech
> of
> respectable Standard English speakers.  I wouldn't be worried unless
> he is
> consistent about it.

it's also a well-documented dialectal variant.  not likely for someone
with obama's linguistic history, though.

arnold

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