pronunciation of "Syracuse"

[Alison Murie]

On Dec 31, 2010, at 10:50 AM, Paul Johnston wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Paul Johnston <paul.johnston at WMICH.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: pronunciation of "Syracuse"
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Sounds like it could be part of the Northern Cities Vowel Shift,
> whereby /I/ > /E/ in certain environments, so milk, pillow > melk,
> pellow.  Lowering before a typical American English /r/ would be
> even more favored, I think, than before /l/, and it's already
> happened in the 17th c. in /IrC/ environments (as in girl) on the
> way to [@r] outside of Scotland and parts of Ireland and until
> recently, Northumberland throughout English.
> On Dec 30, 2010, at 6:14 PM, Alice Faber wrote:
>
>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>> -----------------------
>> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> Poster:       Alice Faber <faber at HASKINS.YALE.EDU>
>> Organization: Haskins Laboratories
>> Subject:      Re: pronunciation of "Syracuse"
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> On 12/30/10 6:09 PM, Charles C Doyle wrote:
>>> On the TV broadcast of the oddly-named New Era Pinstripe Bowl
>>> football game (Syracuse vs. Kansas State) the announcer has been
>>> consistently pronouncing "Syracuse" as [sEr at kjuz].
>>>
>>> Of course, a historical (and orthographic) /E/ preceding /r/ has
>>> frequently come to be manifested as [I]--for instance, in "here"
>>> or "era"--but is the opposite process common?
>>>
>>
>> That's a fairly common regional pronunciation. I'm not sure what the
>> limits are, but I suspect it's around Syracuse itself, as a lot of
>> the
>> folks I hear it from are sports analysts and announcers whose degrees
>> are from there.
>>
>> --
>> =
>> =
>> =
>> =====================================================================
>> Alice Faber
~~~~~~~~
"Saracuse" definitely extends to the Canadian border in Franklin &
Clinton counties.  When we moved up there in 1975, it was one of the
ways of distinguishing natives from outlanders.
AM

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org