"Airplan"

[Wilson Gray]

This was in a note emailed to me by a black man from Florida. This
could be a mere slip of the pen, given that the writer clearly
intended to write "airplane," However it takes me back to my Texas
childhood, when the old standard, "aeroplane," as still in the process
of being replaced by "airplane" in AmE. The "standard" BE
pronunciation, at the time, of the former could be represented in
eye-dialect as "arraplan"[&r at pl&n] or even [&@pl&n].

That /-en/ should go to [-&n] is strange, given that /-&n/ goes to
[-ein]. This is probably a hapax, since, e.g. "plane" has the usual
AmE pronunciation.

-Wilson
--
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die"---a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-----
-Mark Twain

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