LaGuardia, La Bomba

[RonButters at AOL.COM]

There is no way for me to demonstrate to you that your use of yourself as an 
informant is inaccurate, but what you say flies in the face of thousands of 
hours of tape-recorded speech of 
Americans. If you always use [a] in "LaGuardia," you must sound like a very 
artificial and and stilted speaker to those who hear you. Unless of course you 
put significant stress on the first syllable (cf. "Lafayette").

In a message dated 2/8/09 10:01:18 AM, Berson at att.net writes:


> At 2/8/2009 10:48 AM, RonButters at aol.com wrote:
> >In most (all?) varieties of American English, [a] reduces to schwa
> >when unstressed. The pronunciation of "LaGuardia" with two schwas is
> >totally normal in ordinary speech cadence. It is totally unremarkable.
> 
> Not in my normal speech, and I would remark on it (or silently wonder
> if the speaker was from out of town).
> 
> Joel
> 
> 
> >In a message dated 2/8/09 9:25:30 AM, Berson at ATT.NET writes:
> >
> >
> >>At 2/8/2009 10:04 AM, James A. Landau <JJJRLandau at netscape.com> wrote:
> >> >I checked the written transcript of Flight 1549 talking with New
> >> >York TRACON (Terminal Radar Approach Control).  There were only a
> >> >few words with "awe".  One, repeated several times, was "LaGuardia",
> >> >which is most often pronounced /l@ 'gwawr dee @/.  This is odd,
> >> >since it is an Italian name which Fiorella pronounced I don't know
> >> >how but his ancestors pronounced /lah gwahr dee ah/.
> >>
> >>l@ by analogy with "the"?
> >>
> >>BTW, it's "Fiorello", not "la".  And while I listened to his reading
> >>of the comics, I can't attest to his pronunciation, only mine --
> >>which is /lah gwahr dee ah/.  Are recordings of his readings
> >>extant?  Possibly he introducing himself.
> >>
> >>Also BTW, checking on the year of his readings, I notice that the
> >>Wikipedia article separates La Guardia.
> >>
> >>Joel
> >>
> >>------------------------------------------------------------
> >>The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >**************
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> >
> 
> 
> 




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