Eggcorn? "warn" > "worn"

[Wilson Gray]

And the ones who visit the Saint Louis Zoo in "Farest Pork." My
high-school Latin teacher, who was from Omaha, used to claim that that
was the way that we talked. Ridiculous! We said "Farest *Park*."

I've noticed that there are speakers who, to my ear, strangely don't
distinguish between "war" and "wore."  OTOH, I don't distinguish
between "Worf" and "wharf."

-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



On Mon, Feb 9, 2009 at 1:38 AM, Paul Johnston <paul.johnston at wmich.edu> wrote:
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Paul Johnston <paul.johnston at WMICH.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: Eggcorn? "warn" > "worn"
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> I'd imagine the warn/worn distinction, for those who have it, would
> be parallel to things like horse/hoarse--going back to an old /Or/:/
> o:r/ distinction.  The possibility of a distinction shown in OED is a
> relic of that--in really old fashioned British Received
> Pronunciation, you would get /wO:n/ vs. /wO at n/, but most people born
> after Winston Churchill wouldn't have that.  I'd suspect it survives
> nicely in the American South--or at least many parts of it.  Wouldn't
> a pronunciation of warn with /A/ be possible in St. Louis, and a few
> other Midland areas, incl. the ones where people are "barn in the born"?
>
> Paul Johnston
> On Feb 9, 2009, at 12:46 AM, Randy Alexander wrote:
>
>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>
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