[ANTHRO-L] Alaskan

[Ronald Kephart]

On 9/8/08 10:24 AM, "Robert Lawless" <robert.lawless at wichita.edu> wrote:

> I¹m wondering whether I have actually lost that childhood ability to hear
> ³foreignness² or whether speech locally has generally become more homogenized.

I just made a road trip up to Western Maryland where I grew up. I had vowed
to pay attention to local speech up there, because my students and
colleagues sometimes chide me for my pronunciations ("mayzhur" for measure,
"laig" for leg, "tarred" for tired, making homophones of "towel" and "tile,"
etc.). I was fortunate to have breakfast with a dozen of my high school
classmates (class of '63, born ca. 1945), and they all had all these
features; I was vindicated. But, the younger people at the Burger King
register, etc. seemed to sound like they could be from anywhere. Too bad, I
think, but it's evolution, what can you do?

And even as some local features neutralize, larger forces, like the Northern
Cities Vowel Shift, are at work, recreating diversity.

Ron