pronunciation of "Worcester" (Mass.) (was: ADS-L Digest - 22 Feb 2009 to 23 Feb 2009 (#2009-55))

Mark Mandel thnidu at GMAIL.COM
Wed Feb 25 16:50:27 UTC 2009


On Wed, Feb 25, 2009 at 11:36 AM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:

> FWIW, a friend of mine, a native of Worcester, pronounces the name
> something like "Wistuh." I heard the same or, at least, a very similar
> pronunciation, used here in Boston by a guy who said that he had been
> to - not "lived in" - "Wistuh." I'd expect a lower vowel than what is
> probably an unrounded /u/. Naturally, another possibility is that my
> hearing simply isn't what it used to be.
>
> -Wilson
>

Now, that rings a bell.

For 20 years or so I lived in Framingham, Mass., which is halfway between
Boston and Worcester. I think that vowel is close to a lax barred i -- high
central unrounded (but probably not spread). So /'w+st@/, using '+' for
barred i and '@' for schwa. Might even be unrounded back, a lax turned m.

(Did IPA drop barred cap i, or was it ever official? I certainly remember
seeing and using it. And by analogy to that and to cap i and cap Y, I like
to think of the phone formally written as llax turned m as a Cyrillic "sha",
U+0448.)

m a m

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