chill-LAY/chee-Lay

[Damien Hall]

>> are making a false analogy from
>> the adjective/noun _Chilean_, which, of course, does have stress on the
>> middle syllable;

> Am wondering why Chilean would "of course" have the stress in the
> middle. I have always said Chilly for the country and CHILLY-un for the
> adjective. As I recall just about everyone else in the USA did too until
> the 1980's

Well, OK, I bow to superior knowledge there. It did occur to me when I saw
my posting in the digest that I should have written something like 'which,
of course, does have stress on the middle syllable in AmE'.

I'd have written this because it is true in my experience, which is,
admittedly, limited (as a BrE speaker who lived in the USA between 2003 and
2008). I therefore have no memory of what people used to do before then,
but, in my time in the US, I don't remember ever once hearing 'Chilly' or
'Chilly-un'; as far as I knew, in AmE the relevant syllable was always
'lay', not 'lee', and was always stressed.

But I'm glad to have my experience supplemented, and to hear an explanation
for the pronunciation 'chill-AY-un' / 'chee-LAY-un' (cf Spanish
_chileno/-a_, approx. 'chee-LEN-oh/ah') and the hypercorrection 'chill-AY'
/ 'chee-LAY'.

Damien

--
Damien Hall

University of York
Department of Language and Linguistic Science
Heslington
YORK
YO10 5DD
UK

Tel. (office) +44 (0)1904 432665
     (mobile) +44 (0)771 853 5634
Fax  +44 (0)1904 432673

http://www.york.ac.uk/res/aiseb

http://www.york.ac.uk/depts/lang/people/pages/hall.htm

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