"foiemageddon", WOTY for the lily-livered set

[Laurence Horn]

On Jun 7, 2012, at 12:41 PM, Joel S. Berson wrote:

> I'll vote for it!  But how do these non-rhotic
> Californians pronounce "foie" to make it a
> minimal pair with "Ar" (pronounced I presume
> "ah")?  "Fwa" (as I pronounce "foie") or "fa" (or both?) vs. "ah"?
>
> For me, "fwa" is not "fa".  Are there minimal pairs for these two?
>
> Thanks,
> Joel

Good point, Joel.  I guess I must have been thinking of /fw/ as a phoneme, contrasting minimally with zero.  Anyway, the contrast is *more* minimal for those (possibly non-existent) Californians who happen to be non-rhotic (or can't pronounce their /r/s because of the foie gras stuck on the roof of their mouth).

LH

>
> At 6/6/2012 08:49 PM, Laurence Horn wrote:
>> The Times on the upcoming "crise de foie":
>>
>> http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/06/dining/california-chefs-mount-a-repeal-of-foie-gras-ban-set-for-july-1.html
>>
>> "The countdown to foie-mageddon has begun. With
>> less than a month until California’s
>> first-in-the nation ban on foie gras takes
>> effect, fans of the fattened duck and goose
>> liver are buying out stocks of the delicacy,
>> searching for legal loopholes and sating
>> themselves at a series of foie-heavy goodbyes. […]"
>>
>>
>> Other references to foiemageddon, with or
>> without hyphen, can be found, e.g. in blogs
>> associated with the online version of New York
>> magazine, but they all seem fairly recent.  The
>> label works best for non-rhotic speakers for
>> whom "Armageddon" and "foiemageddon" are minimal pairs.
>>
>> LH
>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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