dangers of dialect

[RonButters at AOL.COM]

What TZ says below is ridiculous. Both "on" and "off" have the same vowel in 
many dialects; (e.g., for me, both invariantly have the vowels of caught"; for 
others, both invariantly have the vowel of "cot"). The only dialect that 
makes a distinction is NONstandard: the pronunciation of "on" to rhyme with "bone" 
that one hears in the South. Does TZ really advocate that we all spend six 
weeks in Gastonia, NC, so as to absorb the superior dialect?

There is no way that people who merge the "cot/caught" vowel will be less 
intelligible than those who don't. Indeed, as I recall, the "n" "on" causes some 
subphonemic nasalization of the vowel, which will actually further distinguish 
"on" from "off"--not to mention that /f/ is a voiceless labiodental fricative 
versus /n/, a voiced alveolar "stop." There are so many distinctive features 
that distinguish "off" from "on" that they are less likely to be confused 
(regardless of dialect) than "lion" and "line" in ANY dialect. People are much 
more likely to confuse "Tom" and "dumb".

The potential for "confusion" caused by mergers is marginal, and railing 
against mergers is both trivial and pointless. Context nearly always clarifies 
(when is the last time that you confused "reed" and present-tense "read"? Are 
people really very often confused when asked, "Do you wanna fork?" by an r-less 
person?). And prescriptivist windmill-pokers rarely have any influence at all 
(except to make people uncomforable about saying, e.g.,   "often" and 
"nuclear"--and to bring scorn upon themselves as hopeless cranks).

In a message dated 1/24/09 9:08:09 AM, truespel at HOTMAIL.COM writes:
> 
> 
> ... To me dialect is mostly about pronunciation rather than colloquialisms.
> 
> The worst part about dialects is the confusion it [sic] can cause, like ... 
> "line," mistaken for the word "lion".
> ... vowel similarity portends a problem with "awe-droppers" putting the "ah" 
> (~aa) sound in the word "off" (~auf) giving it the same vowel as "on" 
> (~aan).  In a noisy environment an awe-dropper giving the instruction to leave 
> something "off" (~aaf) could be interpreted as "on".  Not good.  There is no good 
> thing coming out of awe-dropping.
> 
> Tom Zurinskas, USA - CT20, TN3, NJ33, FL5+
> see truespel.com
> 
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> 
> ----------------------------------------
> > Date: Fri, 23 Jan 2009 07:50:09 -0800
> > From: zwicky at STANFORD.EDU
> > Subject: dangers of dialect
> > To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> >
> > ---------------------- Information from the mail header 
> -----------------------
> > Sender: American Dialect Society
> > Poster: Arnold Zwicky
> > Subject: dangers of dialect
> > 
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> > illustrated here:
> >
> > http://arnoldzwicky.wordpress.com/2009/01/23/dialect-dangerous-to-cats/
> >
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