London rhymes

[Wilson Gray]

On Mon, Jul 9, 2012 at 12:05 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu> wrote:
> So this presupposes the ability to rhyme [pEl mEl] with [gEl] (as in "bell", "hell"), right?

Abstracting away from Prof. Stone's correction - seems reasonable to
me. It's in line with the way that some dialects of BrE strike my ear.
It also provides an account of a misspelling of "girl," _gall_, that
I've noted in the writings of random non-native speakers. If you know
the pronunciation of "Pall Mall" and that _girl_ rhymes with it, then
spelling _girl_ as "gall" makes more sense, IMO, than assuming a
mispelling of AmE "gal" in otherwise fairly-formal writing, where no
American would use "gal."

--
-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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