spelling pronunciation--words in -or

[Herb Stahlke]

I have the same impression, that, in fact, /tor/ has become a
compounding element.  The /t/ even gets aspirated.  It does feel like
a class or perhaps profession marker.

Herb

On Thu, Mar 19, 2009 at 6:42 PM, Alison Murie <sagehen7470 at att.net> wrote:
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> Poster:       Alison Murie <sagehen7470 at ATT.NET>
> Subject:      Re: spelling pronunciation--words in -or
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> On Mar 18, 2009, at 10:50 PM, Herb Stahlke wrote:
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>> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> Poster:       Herb Stahlke <hfwstahlke at GMAIL.COM>
>> Subject:      spelling pronunciation--words in -or
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> We've all heard words ending in -or pronounced with stress on the
>> ultima and with the vowel /O/.  My sense of the distribution of this
>> is that it tends to come more from professional educators and
>> administrators than from others.  The stress sounds like the Nuclear
>> Stress Rule in action, where the -or suffix is treated as if it's the
>> head noun and the rest of the word the adjective.  I hadn't heard it
>> with -or/-our spellings until this evening when David Shuster,
>> guesting on Countdown, pronounced "candor" like a compound noun.  His
>> guest responded immediately to him and pronounced the word the same
>> way, with perhaps a little more stress on -or.  Has anyone worked on
>> the distribution of this pronunciation?  /k&ndOr may be different from
>> suffixal -or since it sounds more like the result of the Compound
>> Stress Rule, like "blackbird" as opposed to "black bird."
>>
>> Herb
>>
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> ~~~~~~~~~
> Whenever I hear the National Association of Realtors identified as a
> sponsor on the radio it seems to be pronounced  "real'tors" , as in
> or, or ore, or oar!  For some reason, this always strikes me as more
> than just spelling-awareness; it's as if the -or ending conferred some
> sort of classiness on the business.
> AM
>
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