buoy [boy] ~ [BOO-ee]

[Wilson Gray]

On Fri, Mar 21, 2014 at 4:22 PM, W Brewer <brewerwa at gmail.com> wrote:

> RE: search for MH 370.  WB heard CNN Brit & Aussie reporters separately say
> something like << [BOO-ee] or [BOY]>> as a single expression. Later, Brit
> Richard Quest settled on [BOO-ee].
> DelMarVA WB uses [BOO-ee], but has always felt it as lower register than
> auslaendisch [BOY].  Q: Is [BOO-ee] gaining favor over [BOY] in official
> usage? (WB's first reaction was that non-US Anglophones were making fun of
> my [BOO-ee] pronunciation.)
>

Singin' in the bath tub
Singin' for joy
Livin' the life of Lifebuoy
Can't help singing'
'Cause I know
Lifebuoy really stops
B.O.

A singing commercial from the '40's, before it had ever occurred to any
US-Anglophones that there was a reason to distinguish "buoy" from "boy" any
more than there is a reason to distinguish arbitrarily among, e.g. "mete,"
"meet," and "meat," simply because they aren't spelled the same.

--
-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