Hoarse, four, mourning etc.

[Wilson Gray]

FWIW, I grew up with "morning" = "mawnin'" and "mourning" = "mownin'"
(i.e. falling together with "moanin'"). I thought that "Moanin' Low"
was "Mournin' Low" for years, till I'd lived long enough to know that
there was a word, "moan." Even after my speech became r-ful (well,
people can "dumb it up" to "rhotic," if they wish, but I ain't goin'
faw it), I overcorrected "moanin" to "mournin'".

-Wilson

On Tue, Jun 29, 2010 at 7:17 PM, David Wake <dwake at stanfordalumni.org> wrote:
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       David Wake <dwake at STANFORDALUMNI.ORG>
> Subject:      Re: Hoarse, four, mourning etc.
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> FWIW, I (grew up speaking near-RP) have always had a distinction
> between "mourning" and "morning", with the CURE vowel in the former
> and the NORTH vowel in the latter.  Wells mentions that his father had
> this as well.  It's quite possible that this is some kind of spelling
> pronunciation, and I don't know how widespread it is.
>
> I thought that Wells distinguished between "for" and "four",
> listing"for" in the NORTH set and "four" in the FORCE set, but my
> brain could be playing tricks on me.
>
> David
>
> On Tue, Jun 29, 2010 at 6:36 AM, Geoff Nathan <geoffnathan at wayne.edu> wrote:
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>> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> Poster:       Geoff Nathan <geoffnathan at WAYNE.EDU>
>> Subject:      Hoarse, four, mourning etc.
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> As others have noted, the 'horse:hoarse' contrast has been extensively discussed on this list, and in the dialectological literature. It is one of a small number of similar examples ('boar:bore, board:bored' for example) that continue to contrast in parts of the midwest and southern US. A competent discussion can be found here
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English-language_vowel_changes_before_historic_r#Horse-hoarse_merger
>>
>>
>> unfortunately there are no sound samples for the contrast. The OED says that RP still distinguishes them as a contrast between long open-o and open-o schwa. I believe this has disappeared, however.
>>
>>
>> The other two (for:four, morning:mourning) are identical in all contemporary dialects I'm aware of, and their etymologies suggest that they fell together long ago (the former), or were never different (the latter, at least from Middle English times). There is some dispute about this, however.
>>
>>
>> Geoff
>>
>> Geoffrey S. Nathan
>> Faculty Liaison, C&IT
>> and Associate Professor, Linguistics Program
>> +1 (313) 577-1259 (C&IT)
>> +1 (313) 577-8621 (English/Linguistics)
>>
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--
-Wilson
–––
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"––a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
–Mark Twain

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