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Jeff Stauter asks:
> Why do I say "Warshington" DC instead of "Washington" DC?
Well, I don't know where you come from, and I can't hear your voice,
so I can't speculate about why *you* do it, but I can tell
you that the reason *I* do it (and "warsh" and "warshing", and
of course "Warshington State" and "George Warshington") is
because I was born and grew up in DeKalb, Illinois, where these
pronunciations are common.
Ln my idiolect, at least, it's only words that have /worsh/
in them, like 'Washington' and the forms of the verb 'wash', that
I pronounce this way. These are the only words affected.
These are all things I learned early in life in DeKalb. Now I'm a
linguist so of course I can pronounce these the more conventional way,
too. I live in Ypsilanti, Michigan, which is in Washtenaw County. I
*don't* pronounce this "Warshtenaw" (though it'd sound OK to me if I did)
because I've never heard anybody else say it. They don't do that around
here.
Hope this helps.
-John Lawler http://www.umich.edu/~jlawlerMichigan Linguistics Dept
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"Language is the most massive and inclusive art we know, a - Edward Sapir
mountainous and anonymous work of unconscious generations." 'Language'
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