[Ads-l] almond

[George Thompson]

"i suspect this ash (rather than ah) is an instance of Patriotic Vowels,
with ah perceived as foreign"

"Patriotic Vowels" isn't in the recently-revised "P" section of the OED.

Will Arnold's message be the earliest recorded instance?

GAT


On Thu, May 26, 2016 at 5:50 PM, Arnold M. Zwicky <zwicky at stanford.edu>
wrote:

> > On May 26, 2016, at 7:30 AM, Joan Hall <jdhall at WISC.EDU> wrote:
> >
> > DARE says that pronunciations with an "open o" and no "l" are
> "infrequent. It also shows that pronunciations with an ash are especially
> frequent in California, where they are grown.
>
> i suspect this ash (rather than ah) is an instance of Patriotic Vowels,
> with ah perceived as foreign --  in particular, British, or more
> significantly, (Mexican) Spanish in areas where there are significant
> numbers of such speakers (who are popularly categorized as foreigners, no
> matter how long they've been residents, even unto 150 years).  lots of this
> in place names: Colorado, Nevada, Los Gatos, Los Altos, Palo Alto, etc.).
>
> the idea is that "almond" with ah is Mexican, while ash is Real American.
>
> arnold
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>



-- 
George A. Thompson
The Guy Who Still Looks Stuff Up in Books.
Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern
Univ. Pr., 1998..

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org