"It's _away_ better than fast food! It's Wendy's!" [NT}

[Laurence Horn]

At 2:04 PM -0400 7/21/09, Benjamin Zimmer wrote:
>On Tue, Jul 21, 2009 at 1:11 PM, Scot LaFaive<slafaive at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>  I've always heard it as "way better"...now I'll have to give it a better
>>  listen.
>
>At least in this Wendy's commercial (all the way at the end), it
>sounds pretty clearly like "way better":
>
>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMtBKApXMx0

and glossed as "It's waaaay better than fast food. It's Wendy's."

I have to say that what always struck me about this commercial (or
rather the coda, which appears with slightly different pronunciations
in several different Wendy's commercials that have been airing for
some time) is not the adverb but the fronting of the vowel in "food",
very noticeable for example in this one:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mwqJRY67H-k&feature=related

LH

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