Eddystone Light Fwd: Re: buoy [boy] ~ [BOO-ee]

[Wilson Gray]

On Mon, Mar 31, 2014 at 3:09 PM, Dan Goodman <dsgood at iphouse.com> wrote:

> The OED says that the standard British pronunciation is now "boy",
> but used to be  "bwoi" (N.B. not "booey" -- the glide is at the beginning).
>  It does add, tho, that "some orthoepists" give the "booey" version.  The
>  AHD, OTOH, gives "booey" first & "boy" second.
>

I'd like to have been able to hear someone say "bwoy," in the wild!

My wife remembers Lifebuoy soap from her childhood, too. Nevertheless, she
prefers "boo-ee," anymore.

[Just kidding, though I get the impression, from posts to Facebook, that
positive "anymore" is spreading all over the country. I've heard it used by
Seth MacFarlane, a Connecticut yankee.]

Unsurprisingly, I've been in a vanishingly-small number of situations in
which anyone has had occasion to speak the word, "buoy," for any reason.
But, when I do hear the word spoken, it's always "boo-ee." If not for my
clear memory of the jingle for the soap, I might well have changed my
pronunciation to conform to that., by now.
--
-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