[Ads-l] "Downsight"

Wilson Gray hwgray at GMAIL.COM
Sun Dec 28 04:06:28 UTC 2014


On Sat, Dec 27, 2014 at 10:40 PM, Herb Stahlke <hfwstahlke at gmail.com> wrote:

> pronunciation of -ese words is a shortened vowel with a voiceless
> consonant, which makes the consonant sound like a fortis instead of a lenis.
>

That's the pronunciation that I use. The consonant sounds like a fortis
because it *is* a fortis, in my idiolect, at least.

I was in my 50's, before I finally flashed on the phonolonical underpinning
of "heathen Chinee": a single member of the set, {heathen Chinee[z]}.


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



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