[Ads-l] Pronunciation

[Shawnee Moon]

Yes! I remember that poem! So my pronunciation made sense. 

My father (Kansas City MO born, Chicago raised, UCLA college, NJ residence) pronounced horrible as "Whore-ibble" and orange as "Oar-unj" while my NJ raised mother pronounced it "Hahr-ibble" and "Ahr-unj".

It seems to be local to the mid-Atlantic area? I lived in California later and my father's pronunciation of those words is the norm, with the exception of forehead.

It's odd cause I say forearm as "four arm" and every other fore- word like that as well. Just forehead is oddly pronounced. 

~Shawnee Moon 
****************

... Probably a key factor in this realization was the rhyme (from the Child’s Garden of Verses?):
>> 
>> There was a little girl
>> Who had a little (curl)
>> Right in the middle of her forehead
>> When she was good 
>> She was very very good
>> But when she bad she was horrid
>> 
>> (Not “...she was hoar-head”, or worse)
>> 
>> So then I relearned it as /'far at d/ (i.e. “fahrid" like Jon) and then again (when I switched the vowels in the relevant class of <or> words--“corridor”, “forest”, “orange”, “moral”, “horrid", etc.--from /a/ to /O/) relearned it as /‘fOr at d/ with open o. Now I’m not sure what I say—fahrid, fourid, or fore-head, or any and all of them randomly.    
>> 
>> LH 
>> 
>>> 

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