LaGuardia, La Bomba

[Arnold Zwicky]

On Feb 9, 2009, at 8:16 AM, Ron Butters wrote:
>
> ... The fact is that if people pronounce words without vowel
> reduction to schwa
> or barred-i in unstressed suyllables they will sound hypercorrect
> (in layman's
> terms, "stilted") to their auditors.

two points here.  one is that some speakers might well have some
accent on the first syllable of LaGuardia (as i do in Lafayette); this
would protect the vowel from reduction.  the other is that some
speakers may be proposing to approximate an italian pronunciation of
the name; i believe that Joel Berson suggested this somewhere early in
this thread.

but of course i am as suspicious of self-reports (and reports of other
people's customary pronunciations) as you are.  in particular,
reflecting on your pronunciation of a single word in isolation is not
a good idea.

arnold

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