arse & ass

[petegray]

> [ Moderator's comment:
>   When I lived in Connecticut, I met people who made a distinction between
>   "arse" and "ass" consistently, not as a learned item but in casual speech.
>   --rma ]

NZ English distinguishes between the two in casual speech as well - but in a
school of mine there was a Scottish teacher who used to pronounce "ass" the
way I would pronounce "arse".   So we seem to have:
(a) dialects with /&/ for both
(b) dialects with /a/ for both
(c) dialects which distinguish them;  but different dialects may distinguish
different groups of words.   For example, my ancient and decidedly RP
rhyming dictionary gives only "farce" and "sparse" for the sound I use for
"arse".   It rhymes crass, gas, lass, mass  (in my speech all with /&/) with
grass, brass, class, pass, glass (in my speech all with /a/).

Peter