"old wise tale"/"old wives tell"

[Douglas G. Wilson]

On 2/17/2014 11:47 PM, Wilson Gray wrote:
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: "old wise tale"/"old wives tell"
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On Mon, Feb 17, 2014 at 11:43 AM, Herb Stahlke <hfwstahlke at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> "Old wives tell" sounds like a Southern variety that laxes tense vowels
>> before /l/.
>>
> Is there one? In BE, "tell" for "tale," like "hill" for "heel" is peculiar
> to a few random hypercorrectors and not (stereo)typical at all of the rest
> of us, among whom "tale" for "tell" and "tale" and "heel" for "hill" and
> "heel" is, so to speak, the "standard," as it were.
--

Such laxing is heard around Pittsburgh: e.g., well-known "Steelers" >
"Stillers", also "eagle" > "iggle", etc., also "Swissvale" [place name]
 > "Swissvell", "mail" > "mell", etc.

-- Doug Wilson

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