[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
------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
More information about the Ads-l
mailing list