[Ads-l] The pronunciation of "dwarf"

[Jonathan Lighter]

I've never heard this, but it makes as much sense as / sOrd /.

 Tim Conway (of McHale's Navy fame) put out some comic videos in the '80s
in which he played "Dorf," who was indeed a  / dOrf /.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s1PBe22oqiE,

JL

On Thu, Apr 4, 2019 at 4:48 PM Charles C Doyle <cdoyle at uga.edu> wrote:

> In a recent conversation with a friend, within an interval of about 20
> seconds he pronounced the word “dwarf” four times without the /w/. I asked
> him about the pronunciation, and he insisted that that’s the only way he’s
> ever heard it pronounced (obviously untrue, since he had just heard me ask,
> “Do you always pronounce “dWarf” without the /w/?”).  He is a retired
> linguistics professor in his late 60’s, white, who lived in Maryland and
> Delaware from birth through his early adulthood.
>             None of the dozen dictionaries I consulted record a w-less
> pronunciation of “dwarf.” Of the several specialized pronunciation
> dictionaries that I looked at, only one does--the Oxford Dictionary of
> Pronunciation for Current English (2001), which shows the “w” inside
> parenthesis marks, which means (according to the introduction) that the “w”
> belongs to an “optional pronunciation” in American English.
>             Is the pronunciation without the /w/ at all common?  Is it
> regional?
>
>
> --Charlie
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>


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