wa277 (11/16/82)
I'm conducting an informal survey on the pronunciation of the word "milk." Do you pronounce it as spelled, with a short /i/ (to rhyme with "Bill"), or do you pronounce it with short /e/, "melk," to rhyme with Welk? If you use the "melk" pronunciation, do you distinguish between "pin" and "pen" in pronunciation? Please indicate where you grew up, or what geographic region(s) played a major part in the formation of your speech patterns. (Reply by mail, not on the net.) To tip my hand a bit in advance: the pronunciation "melk" is frequent among native Californians, but does not always correlate with any other /I/>/e/ sound change. From what I hear, the Norwegian for "milk" is pronounced /melk/. I'm wondering if Scandinavian influence in the Midwest accounts for the American pronunciation. (If I were energetic I'd get up & search the linguistic journals for an appropriate article, but I'm too comfortable sitting in front of the computer.) If I learn anything interesting, I'll pass the info on in this newsgroup. David Sewell, UCSD