ben thinking

[Paul Johnston]

Randy:
I think this varies quite a bit.  I hear [E] a lot here in Kalamazoo;
it seems to result from the same lowering part of the Northern Cities
Vowel Shift that gives you [E] in milk, pillow, as it is fostered by
a preceding labial, (as well as following /l/ in other words), and
can occur stressed.  i have [I] stressed, barred capital i
unstressed, myself.  interestingly, you can sometimes get a pen/pin
merger under [E] instead of Southern [I@] in parts of Michigan and NW
Ohio.  It seems especially prevalent in Toledo and the parts of MI
adjoining it.

Yours,
Paul Johnston
On Oct 19, 2009, at 12:34 PM, Joel S. Berson wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "Joel S. Berson" <Berson at ATT.NET>
> Subject:      Re: ben thinking
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>
> At 10/19/2009 09:41 AM, Randy Alexander wrote:
>
>> From a Baltimore Sun article:
>>
>> _War on Fox: Is this best use of White House talent?_
>>
>> 'I have ben thinking all day and much of the night about Week 2 of
>> the
>> White House attack on Fox News Sunday. You can read my Sunday post on
>> it here under the headline "Emanuel, Axelrod offer more bad media
>> criticism."'
>>
>> (At least until it gets fixed.)
>>
>> http://weblogs.baltimoresun.com/entertainment/zontv/2009/10/
>> white_house_fox_news_attack_em.html
>>
>> Pronunciation "been" is usually given with a schwa or "short i" in
>> dictionaries.  My impression is that the schwa form is allegro speech
>> (taking the idea that schwa is not accented in American English), and
>> that the short i version is in the minority,
>
> Then once again I'm in the pretentious minority.
>
> Joel
>
>> with the majority
>> pronunciation (what might be considered more standard) is with a
>> "short e" /bEn/.  It would be silly to assume that this typo was
>> caused by sound-spelling, but it caught my attention and stirred an
>> old pet peeve.
>>
>> --
>> Randy Alexander
>> Jilin City, China
>> Blogs:
>> Manchu studies: http://www.bjshengr.com/manchu
>> Chinese characters: http://www.bjshengr.com/yuwen
>>
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