"The _hopper_"

[Ben Zimmer]

On Tue, Jun 26, 2012 at 11:56 AM, W Brewer wrote:
>
> JFK's Cuba [kjubr] still rings in my ears. (October 1962)

As I discuss in the Language Log post I linked to upthread, JFK
pronounced "Cuba" as [kjubər] in his Cuban Missile Crisis speech only
when the word was followed by a vowel -- in other words, exactly as
you'd expect a non-rhotic speaker with intrusive /r/ to pronounce it:

http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=390

JFK impersonators overextend the intrusive /r/ to make it sound like
he always pronounced it as [kjubər].

--bgz

--
Ben Zimmer
http://benzimmer.com/

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