LaGuardia, La Bomba, cabana

[RonButters at AOL.COM]

In a message dated 2/9/09 10:54:08 AM, zwicky at STANFORD.EDU writes:


> 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
> 
> 

Good point--like POlice rather than PoLICE. Would one expect this in New 
York? Not too likely, but maybe it could be the case for folks who moved there 
from eastern Kentucky. And of course you are right--people who affect an Italian 
pronunciation may preserve the [a], though again, won't they sound stilted? An 
ancedote:

I recently spent a day at a waterpark in Orlando with my partner, my 
daughters, their husbands, six of my grandchildren, and one grandchild's boyfriend. We 
rented cabañas. I pronounced the word [k at bany@]. They all looked at me as if 
I were the phoniest person on earth, and corrected my pronunciation: it is 
[k at bæn@] in the USA! (@ = schwa, æ = the vowel of "bag").


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