ont/ahnt

[Jonathan Lighter]

Father and bother rhyme perfectly for me.

Dog and hog don't. At all.

JL




On Wed, Oct 6, 2010 at 6:37 PM, Paul Johnston <paul.johnston at wmich.edu>wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Paul Johnston <paul.johnston at WMICH.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: ont/ahnt
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> "CON"/"KAHN" would work as [kDn]/[kAn] in the Pittsburgh area, I think, and
> neither would rhyme with "town", which would be [tan].  I just checked with
> two colleagues of mine, one from Canonsburg, PA, the other from Fairmont,
> WV, and they had different vowels in father and bother (a near-minimal pair)
> as [A] vs. [D] (rounded low vowel).  The latter is LOT/THOUGHT for them.
>  The former is, in Wells's terminology, PALM.
>
> Paul Johnston
>  On Oct 6, 2010, at 6:17 PM, David Wake wrote:
>
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> > Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> > Poster:       David Wake <dwake at STANFORDALUMNI.ORG>
> > Subject:      Re: ont/ahnt
> >
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> > Can you offer a minimal pairs for these dialects?  E.g. "con"/"Kahn",
> > perhaps?  I thought that, with the exception of Eastern New England,
> > these dialects would all use their LOT vowel (rounded or unrounded)
> > for both lexical sets.
> >
> > D
> >
> > On Wed, Oct 6, 2010 at 11:16 AM, Paul Johnston <paul.johnston at wmich.edu>
> wrote:
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> >> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> >> Poster:       Paul Johnston <paul.johnston at WMICH.EDU>
> >> Subject:      Re: ont/ahnt
> >>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >>
> >> Most dialects where the LOT class is a low back ROUNDED vowel will
> pronounce ont and ahnt differently, particularly because of the /n/ after
> it-- Eastern New England, the area from Erie PA through Pittsburgh down into
> West Virginia and into Kentucky, several Upper Southern dialects, Canada--in
> Eastern New England, the difference should be really striking: [D] (I mean
> the IPA symbol for a low back rounded vowel here) vs. a front [a:].
> >>
> >> Paul Johnston
> >>
> >>
> >> On Oct 6, 2010, at 10:23 AM, 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: 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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> >>
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> >
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