Tywappity Bottoms

[Alan Hartley]

> Don't forget that for speakers of more Southern English the letter "y" could be
> used for the low-central vowel /a/, since "y" isn't a diphthong, but rather [a:]
> in those areas, e.g., "fire" is pronounced [fa:r].

My work on Lewis and Clark shows no signs of [ai] > [a] in the journals
(1803-06). Evidence for the "Southern Shift" (that also produced changes
like [ei] > [ai]) really starts to show up only late in the 19c. (It's
surprising that the phonetic feature that best defines the modern
Southern dialect-area is of such recent development.)

Alan