budd@arizona.UUCP (09/19/83)
Here is a new topic. How about regional homonyms? For example in many parts of the country the names "don" and "dawn" are indistinguishable, while elsewhere they are very distinct. Judging from a recent article in net.math, there must be someplace where "except" and "accept" sound similar, although they certainly don't where I grew up (the Northwest). (Where ever is was the net.math article came from - I suppose "excess" and "access" must also be similar, as in "limited excess highway"). Somebody recently mentioned "oil" and "all" sounding similar in the south. Any other interesting examples of words clearly different in one part of the country and almost the same in another?
trb@floyd.UUCP (Andy Tannenbaum) (09/19/83)
European immigrants during the early part of this century often spoke with heavy accents and the Marx Brothers often played on this fact. I don't remember the sketch verbatim (where is rlgvax!oz when you need him?) but it went something like this: [Revenuer and Chico come to this dramatic climax:] Revenuer: You owe the government money, taxes! Chico: I have an aunt who lives in Texas. Revenuer: No! I mean dollars! Chico: That's where she lives. Dallas, Texas. Andy Tannenbaum Bell Labs Whippany, NJ (201) 386-6491
rene@umcp-cs.UUCP (09/24/83)
My friend who went to school in the south says that one of his teachers insisted that 'pin' and 'pen' were homonyms (piyn, if you can pronounce that). - rene
dce@tekecs.UUCP (David Elliott) (09/25/83)
In the South, "pin" and "pen" are homonyms, though they are not always pronounced "piyn". Southern English has no real separate 'en' and 'in'. All 'en' and 'in' words contain the same 'i' sound as in 'kid'. This is confusing to some people. For example, the names "Jenny" and "Ginny" (short for Virginia) are pronounced the same. One time I tried to find a word with 'en' that had the same vowel as in "head", but I could not think of one. Therefore, Southern English has the following phonetic transformation : e -> i / __n David
berry@zehntel.UUCP (09/27/83)
#R:umcp-cs:-270900:zinfandel:9300028:000:293 zinfandel!berry Sep 26 10:35:00 1983 My wife pronounces "pin" and "pen" as homonyms. This leads to confusion when, for example, I am helping her lay out and mark patterns for sewing, and she says "Hand me that p[ie]n" and gets the wrong one. Berry Kercheval Zehntel Inc. (decvax!sytek!zehntel!zinfandel!berry) (415)932-6900
emrath@uiuccsb.UUCP (09/29/83)
#R:arizona:-469800:uiuccsb:10500005:000:192 uiuccsb!emrath Sep 26 03:47:00 1983 No doubt about that. My cousins grew up in Louisiana, and when they say "pen", I am sure they are saying "pin". One of their names is Ken, which sounds just like "kin" when the others say it.
jdd@allegra.UUCP (09/30/83)
Well, I was born and raised in South Carolina. When I was growing up, I
thought that "pen" and "pin" were pronounced identically (as indeed they
were). Not only that, but I couldn't \hear/ the difference! I remember a
grade-school teacher illustrating the difference, but it was lost on me.
I left there a long time ago and have replaced my Southern accent with some
Yankee mishmosh, but I still can hardly hear the difference between the two.
If I exaggerate the pronunciation, I can make "pen" sound different from
"pin", but I usually forget.
(I had bad troubles with "idea" too!)
Cheers,
John ("Long Way From Home") DeTreville
Bell Labs, Murray Hilldebray@sbcs.UUCP (Saumya Debray) (10/19/83)
In junior high I had an Australian teacher who pronounced "paper" the same as "piper", "late" the same as "light", etc.: in general, "-ay-" sounds as "-ai-". Saumya Debray SUNY at Stony Brook