/Erjudait/

[Jonathan Lighter]

Funny, I always thought the glideless version was the weird one.

JL

On Tue, Feb 28, 2012 at 12:13 AM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu>wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: /Erjudait/
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On Feb 27, 2012, at 11:39 PM, Douglas G. Wilson wrote:
>
> > On 2/27/2012 11:16 PM, Herb Stahlke wrote:
> >> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> >> Sender:       American Dialect Society<ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> >> Poster:       Herb Stahlke<hfwstahlke at GMAIL.COM>
> >> Subject:      /Erjudait/
> >>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >>
> >> Here in the Midwest I've been noticing local TV newsreaders
> >> pronouncing "erudite" as /Erjudait/, inserting a palatal glide between
> >> /r/ and /u/.  I don't know if this pronunciation is found in Britain,
> >> but the OED gives the pronunciation /ˈɛrədaɪt/.  I don't hear the
> >> glide insertion in words like "rude" or "ruse," and I suspect that
> >> /Erjudait/ is simply hypercorrection.  It just seems odd that these
> >> speakers don't insert /j/ between other alveolars and /u/.
> > --
> >
> > MW3 shows /Erj at dait/ or so first, "also" /Er at dait/. Pronunciations with
> > and without glides are also shown for "garrulous" and "corrugate" inter
> > alia.
> >
> > I confess that I (a sort-of-midwestern type) would say "erudite" and
> > "garrulous" with glide (but not "corrugate"). I might even pronounce the
> > middle syllable vowel as /ju/ (instead of /j@/) in careful speech.
> >
> > -- Doug Wilson
> >
> Funny how we make such different choices, if choices they are, as we glide
> through life, or don't.  It's always been "er-ju-dite" for me (< NYC), but
> I'm glideless in "garrulous" (awful name for a movie), as well as in
> "corrugate". Contra Pedro V, though, I do have a glide in "avenue", whether
> numbered (5th), lettered (C), or named (of the Americas).  None even
> imaginable in "rude" or "ruse", though--and I'm sure I'd boggle if I heard
> anyone else put a glide in those, at least on this side of the pond.  I've
> heard plenty of glides in "Tuesday", "news", and such, but I don't go in
> for them there myself.
>
> LH, native Noo Yorker (no, not Noo Yawka)
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>



-- 
"If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."

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