"The Battle of Bataan" heard as

[Herb Stahlke]

The American deaffrication of [dzh] usually occurs in foreign words or
words thought by the speaker to be foreign, like Elijah, Fallujah, Beijing,
etc.  I haven't noticed it much in native words or words that aren't proper
nouns--and, yes, "assuage" comes from French in the 16th c. but is as
nativized today as "language" [laeNgw at zh].




On Sun, Jan 13, 2013 at 12:32 AM, W Brewer <brewerwa at gmail.com> wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       W Brewer <brewerwa at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: "The Battle of Bataan" heard as
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> WG: <<<"The Battle of Bataan" heard as Ba-TAHN>>>
> WB:  I struggle to have a label for the American predilection to replace
> *a* [ae, ash] with *a* [AH]. (Didn't Mark Twain comment on the elegant
> broad *a* [AH] vs. vulgar narrow(?) *a* [ash]?)  Something similar happens
> with French borrowings into American English (hypergallicism), Fr. IPA [a]
> (low, front) > AmE. [AH] (low, back), not [ae] (lower-mid, front):  In
> elegantese, back *a* is euphonic, front *a* dysphonic. (All this doubtless
> abetted by a perceived prestige of British English [AH] vs. SAE [ae] in
> e.g. pass, dance, half).
>    BTW, Randi Kaye on CNN the other day actually pronounced *assuage* as
> [uh-swAHzh], with [ei] > [AH], [dzh] > de-affricated [zh]. (Something about
> a woman who wanted to "assuage her testimony".)
>
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