Surprise

Wed Feb 18 18:36:59 UTC 2009

Tom,

Phonemes are not determined by acts of Congress, God, of any other
source of authority.  They develop and change on the basis of usage.
If you insist on the alphabetic principal, then you need to be
pronouncing all gh sequences, using the velar fricative represented in
IPA by [x].  The sound was present in the English of 15th c. London
when Caxton set up his printing business and established London
pronunciation as the basis of modern English spelling.  Pronunciation
has changed, especially dropping /x/, or in words like "tough" and
"enough" merging it to /f/.  If you had lived in 16th c. London would
you have opposed the dropping of the phoneme /x/, especially since the
gh spellings continued to be used?

One of the strengths of English orthography, as someone else has
already noted, is that it violates the alphabetic principle, with the
result that one writing system serves well for all English speakers,
including speakers of dialects of English that are barely mutually
intelligible.

So some speakers of American English have the low back merger, others
have the lax front merger resulting in "pin" and "pen" becoming
identical, others have /r/-drop, and still others, like me, have split
/ai/ and /au/ into /ai, @i/ and /au, @u/ creating two new phonemes.
Languages do this all the time, and these changes rarely lead to
misunderstandings among speakers of American English, although I do
remember meeting the wife of a new colleague and drawing a complete
blank when she asked, in good Bostonian, "Does your wife like
/bA:gIns/? (where A is the vowel of "caught" and I is the vowel of
"kit").  I thought of Bilbo; she was thinking of flea markets.

Herb

On Wed, Feb 18, 2009 at 8:13 AM, Tom Zurinskas <truespel at hotmail.com> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Tom Zurinskas <truespel at HOTMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: Surprise
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> The effect of TV.  Very interesting.  I think TV is the very reason awe-dro=
> pping is going on.  Many west coast folks are bringing that dialect change =
> into the media.  My wife's caught it now.  This morining it was ~kaafee ins=
> tead of ~kaufee for the word "coffee". =20
>
> But that change is an unconscious one. =20
>
> =20
>
> Standing up against r-dropping is a good thing.  It preserves the alphabeti=
> cal principle.  Standing up against awe-dropping as well.  Unconsciously=2C=
>  America is dropping a phoneme of English. =20
>
> Tom Zurinskas=2C USA - CT20=2C TN3=2C NJ33=2C FL5+=20
> see truespel.com
>
>
> =20
> =20
>
>
>
>
>
> =20
>> Date: Tue=2C 17 Feb 2009 11:23:30 -0500
>> From: wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM
>> Subject: Re: Surprise
>> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>>=20
>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------=
> ------
>> Sender: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> Poster: Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM>
>> Subject: Re: Surprise
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------=
> ------
>>=20
>> I rarely pronounce the first r in "surprise=2C" but I can't imagine elidi=
> ng it
>> in "surmise" (now that I try=2C it actually seems difficult!).
>>=20
>> You may not believe this=2C but...when I was four or five I began to noti=
> ce
>> that most New Yorkers=2C including my family=2C were what I would now cal=
> l
>> "non-rhotic" - quite different from most of the old-movie cowboys I was
>> watching every afternoon on Channel 13.
>>=20
>> I deliberately set out to get rhotic so that=2C when I grew up and went
>> West=2C I'd fit right in with Roy and the other punchers. And you know
>> what? My dream partly came true! I rarely miss an r !
>>=20
>> Coincidence? Or...?
>>=20
>> JL
>> On Tue=2C Feb 17=2C 2009 at 10:57 AM=2C <ronbutters at aol.com> wrote:
>>=20
>> > ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>> > -----------------------
>> > Sender: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> > Poster: ronbutters at AOL.COM
>> > Subject: Re: Surprise
>> >
>> > -----------------------------------------------------------------------=
> --------
>> >
>> > This is variable in my speech=2C though the /r/ tends to be realized on=
> ly in
>> > nonallegro speech. I expect this is true of most rhotic dialects. I don=
> 't
>> > THINK that I have deletion in "surmise"--but I am wary of self-reports
>> > (maybe it gets weakened variably in allegro speech).
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > Other such words: surreal ...
>> >
>> >
>> > -----Original Message-----
>> > From: Randy Alexander <strangeguitars at GMAIL.COM>
>> > To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>> > Sent: Mon=2C 16 Feb 2009 11:07 am
>> > Subject: [ADS-L] Surprise
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > 1. Does anyone with a rhotic dialect rhoticize the first "r" in
>> > "surprise" (I don't).
>> >
>> > 2. Does anyone know of any other words that in your rhotic dialect
>> > that have an unrhoticized postvocalic "r"?
>> >
>> > --
>> > Randy Alexander
>> > Jilin City=2C China
>> > My Manchu studies blog:
>> > http://www.bjshengr.com/manchu
>> >
>> > ------------------------------------------------------------
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>> >
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>> >
>>=20
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>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
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