LINGUIST List 15.45

Tue Jan 13 2004

Qs: Chicago Dialect; Ling Teaching Materials

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Directory

  1. Rich Alderson, Query: Chicago suburban dialect developments?
  2. Zohra Mimouni, Linguistics teaching material to college students

Message 1: Query: Chicago suburban dialect developments?

 Date: Thu, 8 Jan 2004 20:48:40 -0500 (EST)
From: Rich Alderson <mailalderson.users.panix.com>
Subject: Query: Chicago suburban dialect developments?

It has been very nearly 20 years since I moved away from the Chicago area,
though I still visit family there from time to time. I certainly don't get
much contact with suburban young people.

On Monday evening, 5 January 2004, one of the contestants on the game show
"Wheel of Fortune" was described as being from Oakbrook, which I remember as a
western/southwestern suburb. This young woman, in general to my ear, had an
idiolect which partook only mildly of the Northern Cities Chain Shift, except
for the names of certain letters of the alphabet, those whose Network Standard
names consist of IPA epsilon + nasal or fricative. Using <E> for IPA epsilon
and <> for IPA turned-e ("shwa"), these were pronounced, quite emphatically:

	[En] => [n]
	[Em] => [m]
	[Ef] => [f]
	[Es] => [s]

Was this idiosyncratic? Is this common to some group of speakers, more likely
under the age of 25, in (some of) the suburbs of Chicago? More widely spread?

								Rich Alderson
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Message 2: Linguistics teaching material to college students

 Date: Wed, 7 Jan 2004 14:26:03 -0500 (EST)
From: Zohra Mimouni <zmimounicmontmorency.qc.ca>
Subject: Linguistics teaching material to college students

I'll be teaching a Genereal Linguistics course to college students at
the end of January. Do you know of any book(s) and/or any other
teaching tools (CDs, movies, etc.)that would make this topic easier to
learn (and to teach)?

Thanks 
Zohra Mimoun, Ph.D.
Montmorency College, Laval
Canada
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