Raleigh, N.C. -- awesome or aw-dropping?

[Mark Mandel]

I grew up in NYC, and "dog" is unique for me: the only ‹-og› word with /ɔ/
(open o, aka turned c).

"lot" and "palm" have the same vowel for me apart from length, /ɑ/ (script
a). And the length... What the heck? I wrote "The length can be safely
ascribed to the coda: unvoiced stop vs. nasal", but then I sat back and
tried some others: "dom" (slang for the dominant member of a
dominant-submissive relationship), "ROM", "Tom", "calm". And though I'm
beginning to scant out on the distinction now, I do think the ‹-alC› words
do have a longer vowel for me.

Mark


On Fri, Feb 14, 2014 at 10:11 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu>wrote:

> On Feb 14, 2014, at 9:45 PM, Ben Zimmer wrote:
> >
> > I don't think "blog" has become common enough in the intervening six
> > years to join the "dog" class for us non-mergerers.
> >
> Is there anything else in your "dog" class?  As noted, I don't have
> anything in mine, however common--other than "blawg", which is quite un-,
> and which of course qualifies for membership in the class only as a
> spelling pronunciation.  It doesn't seem as though frequency really plays a
> role for me, except perhaps for the fact that "dog" is more frequent than
> any of its non-rhyming rivals. Do other NYCers share this intuition?
>
> LH
>
>

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