ont/ahnt (UNCLASSIFIED)

[David Wake]

Wikipedia has an article on the 'father-bother merger":
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonological_history_of_English_low_back_vowels#Father-bother_merger

According to Wells, it's only in Newfoundland, Eastern New England and
(partly) New York City that they are distinguished within North
America.  Outside North America (including the Caribbean) they are
distinguished by all native accents of English.

David

In Boston/Eastern New England

On Wed, Oct 6, 2010 at 7:54 AM, Mullins, Bill AMRDEC
<Bill.Mullins at us.army.mil> wrote:
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "Mullins, Bill AMRDEC" <Bill.Mullins at US.ARMY.MIL>
> Subject:      Re: ont/ahnt (UNCLASSIFIED)
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Classification: UNCLASSIFIED
> Caveats: NONE
>
> In my post on the subject, where I intentionally typed "ont", it was to
> specifically distinguish it from "ahnt".  That is, in the dialect of the
> people whose pronunciation I was trying to reproduce, "ont" did not/does
> not equal "ahnt".
>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On
> Behalf Of
>> Joel S. Berson
>> Sent: Wednesday, October 06, 2010 9:23 AM
>> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>> Subject: Re: ont/ahnt
>>
>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
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>> -
>> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> Poster:       "Joel S. Berson" <Berson at ATT.NET>
>> Subject:      Re: ont/ahnt
>>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> ------
>> -
>>
>> At 10/5/2010 08:49 PM, Wilson Gray wrote:
>> >Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
>> >
>> >On Tue, Oct 5, 2010 at 5:45 PM, David Wake <dwake at stanfordalumni.org>
> wrote:
>> > > "ont"
>> >
>> >In most dialects of AmE, "ont" = "ahnt."
>>
>> Can you give me some examples where it doesn't?  And please don't say
>> you won't.
>>
>> Joel
>>
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