Eggcorn? "warn" > "worn"

[Herb Stahlke]

My Inland Northern dialect may be a little different from a lot of AmE
on back vowels, but I have open /o/ before /r/.  The only other back
vowels I have before /r/ are /a/ (script a) and /u/.  I also have the
rhotic vowel, or syllabic /r/ if you prefer, as in "burn."  So in my
speech "warn" and "worn" have the same vowel, open /o/.

Herb

On Mon, Feb 9, 2009 at 12:46 AM, Randy Alexander
<strangeguitars at gmail.com> wrote:
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Randy Alexander <strangeguitars at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: Eggcorn? "warn" > "worn"
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On Mon, Feb 9, 2009 at 4:17 AM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:
>> "The only thing to do is to _worn_ you guys [away] from this [kind] of
>> low-end product."
>>
>>
>> This one probably is dialect-dependent. In my speech, "warn" and
>> "worn" don't fall together, though, e.g. "sense," "since," and "cents"
>> do.
>
> Interesting.  I believe this is the most common and standard AmE
> pronunciation for both words, but I'd be interested in what ANAE (or
> any other dialect survey) says if anyone has access to that (if it
> even covers that).
>
> OED has [wɔːn] (lengthened opened O) for both, and [wɔən] (open O
> followed by schwa) as an alternate pronunciation for worn, so it looks
> like in BrE they are homonyms for most people too.
>
> My father's wife (white, grew up in Cincinnati) once argued with me
> about the correct or most common pronunciation of "warn" (or war,
> ward, wart, warm, etc.).  She said "warn" is [wɑɚn] (script A and
> right-hook schwa), rhyming with "barn", adding that newscasters say it
> that way.  I told her no way.  Later, she said she paid careful
> attention to newscasters saying those words and admitted to me that
> she was wrong (which was the first and only time she has ever done
> that).
>
> In my pronunciation classes I teach that "ar" preceded by "w" sounds
> [oɚ] (lower-case O and right-hook schwa).
>
> --
> Randy Alexander
> Jilin City, China
> My Manchu studies blog:
> http://www.bjshengr.com/manchu
>
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