[Ads-l] Dorchester

[Amy West]

I'll also add that in MD the pronunciations are more internally 
consistent: in MD the county is pronounced rhotically /war-chester/, and 
I think they have a /door-chester/ as well. Again, I think origins of 
the people, place names, and the influence of spelling are at play here.

---Amy West

On 4/21/16 9:48 AM, Amy West wrote:
> On 4/21/16 12:00 AM, ADS-L automatic digest system wrote:
>> Date:    Wed, 20 Apr 2016 08:08:08 -0700
>> From:    "James A. Landau"<JJJRLandau at NETSCAPE.COM>
>> Subject: Dorchester
>>
>> My daughter, who lives in Canton, Massachusetts, asks:  If Gloucester is pronounced/glahster/  (I taste not the Pierian spring of IPA) and Worcester is pronounced/wooster/, why isn't Dorchester pronounced/dorchster/  or/dorster/?
>>
>> - Jim Landau
> Well, it's not /wooster/, it's WUH-stuh. And I think I hear 
> DUH-chester among the non-rhotic. So, I think the question is really 
> why isn't it *DUH-stuh? (And I may have the stresses wrong: I'm not a 
> phonologist)
>
> I think history and spelling prons play a role. Yes, historically that 
> -cester and -chester are the same word. So, historically the -rc- and 
> -rch- clusters *should* be the same/similar. However, I'd actually 
> look to where the settlers here came from England, and where those 
> names in England come from, and how they were historically pronounced 
> there. [I'm told by a former student of mine who just studied at U of 
> Worcester (UK) that they use the same/a similar non-rhotic pron 
> (currently) for the name.] The difference in pron. may actually be 
> really, really old: the split may be rooted in the various Old 
> English/Anglo-Saxon regional dialects. I'd have to do some more poking 
> around instead of just responding off the top of my head.
>
> Note the spelling difference: that may either represent a regional 
> pron difference of that -c- when the names were brought over or it may 
> have influenced folks here to make one -c- sibillant(?) and not the 
> other.
>
> ---Amy ("What? I should actually look stuff up?") West
> rhotic resident of Worcester


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