Dialect-clash

[Wilson Gray]

Back around 1962, a former German-"linguist" barracksmate who had
taken a "European out" was "living on the economy" in West Berlin by
teaching English at a local Berlitz School. He was annoyed because his
expertise as a native-speaker of English.

By some chance, my buddy had occasion to speak the word, _bloody_.
Naturally, he pronounced it [bl^di] and was about to proceed, when one
of his "doob" students interrupted him.

"Excuse, please, sir. You make a mistake. Is that word not pronounced [blu:di]?"

"[blu:di]?! No! It's pronounced *[bl^di]*!"

"Well, sir, perhaps *you* are thinking this, because *you* are an
*American*! If you were English, you would say, '[blu:di]'!"

The rest is left to the reader's imagination.

>From time to time, I've made reference to a set of medical reality
shows on the tube that I subsume under the rubric, "The Doctors." Some
of these programs of British origin.

On The British Doctors, it's struck me that the only pronunciation of
"bloody" that I've heard used so far is, for all practical purposes,
[blu:di]. Cf., e.g. the dialect used on consult-your-local-listings
Bizarre ER.

Youneverknow.

--
-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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