LINGUIST List 9.733

Sun May 17 1998

Disc: Recent Change in English

Editor for this issue: Martin Jacobsen <martylinguistlist.org>

Directory

1. Isa Kocher, Re: 9.727, Disc: Recent changes in English
2. Joseph F Foster, Re: 9.729, Disc: Recent Change in English, "the Ukraine"
3. Rebecca Larche Moreton, Recent change in English

Message 1: Re: 9.727, Disc: Recent changes in English

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> From: LINGUIST Network <linguistlinguistlist.org> Some younger
> responders expressed their doubts as to whether the
>following
> "old" pronunciations had ever really existed:
> [0lbukeRk] (instead of [&lbukRki]) for _Albuquerque_
> [YlYnwa] (instead of [YlYn9y(s)]) for _Illinois_
> [yosmayt] (instead of [yosEmYti]) for _Yosemite_
> and that got me to start doubting myself. Can anyone among the
> "older" fellow LINGUIST-Listers confirm either existence or
> non-existence of the "old" pronunciations before say mid 1950-s?

Having passed the half century mark by a few years, I might submit
these personal observations:

[&lbukRki] for _Albuquerque_ is the only way I can recall that I have
ever heard it.

[YlYnwa] for _Illinois_ strikes me as bizarre and I can't imagine
anyone ever having said it except as a teenage joke after a French
class.

[yosmayt] and [yosEmYti] for _Yosemite_ seem both to be forms I can
recall having heard, although the former seems more "American" to my
ear, and the latter more "TV announcer".

Isa

Message 2: Re: 9.729, Disc: Recent Change in English, "the Ukraine"

 English has a definite article. The last time I checked,
Ukrainian didnt. It may be developing one; northern dialects of Great
Russian appear to be. But even if Ukrainian (Little Russian!) be
developing such an article, there is no reason to suppose it will work
like the English one. Indeed, articles are notoriously idiomatic for
languages that have them, as a look at the way related languages of
Western Europe differ in use of them.

 The move to get Americans to stop saying "the Ukraine" and
start saying "Ukraine" is largely, I suggest, the spawn of a misguided
political correctness and leads to the absurdity of trying to make
article usage in a language that has one conform to imagined usage in
a language that doesnt. It is claimed that somehow the use of the
article relegates Ukrainia (why isnt anybody trying to prescribe
that?) i.e. the Ukraine to subordinate status. Nobody accuses those of
us who say "the Argentine" of therewith deprecating the Independence
and Sovereignty of that country.

 Me, Im going to keep right on saying "the Ukraine" and "the
Argentine" -- Oh by the way -- I'll keep saying "the Gambia" too.

Joe Foster
 Joseph F Foster
 Dept of Anthropology
 U of Cincinnati 

This is an interesting discussion; what I am getting from it mainly is
that many of the "changes" people have been noticing amount to the
spreading of items which have been in the language in one or another
geographical area for a long time. This makes sense, since people are
more than ever before moving away from their own D1 (first dialect)
areas to new places to live and work, and since the mass media are
available to people everywhere. It is as though the great pot of
English is being stirred and stirred. It will be fun to see what
boils up and replaces what.

And speaking of the mass media: NPR has been mentioned several times
in the discussion; I agree: if you hear it on All Things Considered,
you know it's happening!

Rebecca Larche Moreton
301 South Ninth Street
Oxford, MS 38655

<mlrlmolemiss.edu>