My limericks
Jules Levin
ameliede at EARTHLINK.NET
Thu May 31 05:47:32 UTC 2012
On 5/30/2012 8:43 PM, Paul B. Gallagher wrote:
> Robert Orr wrote:
>
>> "Let's all join the chorus "
>> "For our fabled Horace"
>> how many people rhyme "chorus" and "Horace"?
>
> Too many, in my book.
>
> Where I come from (N'York, originally), "Horace" has "short o" as in
> "not," which sounds the same as "a" in "father" (British speakers and
> New Englanders will disagree). But many Americans, especially south of
> here, lengthen stressed vowels before intervocalic /r/:
>
> borrow, coronary, Dorothy, florist, Florida, foreign, horrible,
> horror, majority, minority, moral, Norris, orange, origin, porridge,
> sorry, torrent, torrid, etc.
>
> I have /a/ as in "father" in all of these.
One man's neutralization is another man's contrast. Since I have two
different vowels possible among the set above, I don't see how Orr
(/ahr/?) claims to be preserving a contrast. I would distinguish
between 'sorry' and a nonce 'sorey' as in "my muscles are feeling kinda
sorey..."
Jules Levin
>
> I do have "long o" in some words (boring, glorious, Taurid), so for me
> these speakers are neutralizing a contrast. Their pronunciation of
> "horrible" sounds to me like "whorable." (sorry!)
>
> Many of these speakers also lengthen other "short" vowels before
> intervocalic /r/ and in some other positions. Thus, "I maried mary
> Mary and we all had a Mary Christmas." For me, merry/marry/Mary have
> three distinct vowels. Compare also "mirror" pronounced as "meerer,"
> "error" as "airer" ("to air is human"), etc. Some even say things like
> "emediately," but that might be under the influence of the following
> /i/. Here, too, these speakers are neutralizing what I hear as a
> contrast.
>
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