spelling pronunciation--words in -or

[M Covarrubias]

On Mar 19, 2009, at 8:17 PM, Laurence Horn wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: spelling pronunciation--words in -or
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>
> At 6:42 PM -0400 3/19/09, Alison Murie wrote:
>> On Mar 18, 2009, at 10:50 PM, Herb Stahlke wrote:
>>>
>>> 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. ...
>>>
>>> Herb
>>>
>>
>> ~~~~~~~~~
>> 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
>>
>
> Well, maybe; I've certainly noticed that as well (as in the radio
> commercial that proclaims to one and all that "only real-tors are
> members of the National Association of Real-tors"). ...
>
> LH
>
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an obvious parody of this pronunciation--  the 'Mr. Show' episode
'Peanut Butter, Eggs, and Dice' ends with a skit about the 'cyrus
dewey awards' ceremony for actors who have played retarded characters.
i remember that the comments of a character played by (i believe) jill
talley included plenty of self-adulation when speaking of the great
honor of being recognized for making such brave choices as an 'acTOR'.

michael

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