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Editor for this issue: Sarah Murray <sarahlinguistlist.org>
olemiss.edu>Yes, you are right, that vowel is popularly represented as 'ah', and this spelling grates on many of us for whom the vowel in question is native. It is a low, front, open, tense vowel, frequently non-distinctively nasal. I think that it is written in the press as "ah" because it is similar to the front, low, open, tense vowel heard in the first syllable of "Harvard" when that word is spoken by people from the Boston area. I myself use a Greek alpha (can't write in on my email) to represent this sound phonetically. I think the use of this symbol was first suggested to me by Corky Feagin. (As far as the ordinary spelling is concerned, I would advocate using a plain 'I' for this sound just as we do now, and making everybody else in the country change to the spelling 'ay' for their way of writing it: Ay am fayne, may friend. Wouldn't inconvenience me none.) Jack Hall's description of the distribution of this alpha-sound is only one of at least three kinds of distribution for the alpha vowel. Distribution of this alpha-sound in Southern States English differs within regional, social, ethnic, age, and possibly other sorts of groups. Hall's description fits my own speech (I am 66, born and raised in Jackson, Mississippi, in a white, middle-class setting) but there are other configurations. In some geographical and/or social varieties, alpha occurs in all positions; 'nice white rice' with all alpha-vowels is the shibboleth phrase for this kind of distribution. Younger (and younger) people from my area use the alpha in fewer positions and I am not surprised now to hear diphthongs before voiced final consonants from them, though they do maintain the alpha in vowel-final stressed syllables for the most part. Becky (Rebecca Larche Moreton) 301 S. Ninth St. Oxford, MS 38655 USAMail to author|Respond to list|Read more issues|LINGUIST home page|Top of issue