REg wrote:
> For me a rhyme of 'thorough' with 'burrow' > or 'furrow' highlights the problem. I base my observations on > CNN, Fox as well as Discovery and National Geographic. > Australian English and I think "Standard" English would rhyme > more with "burra" and 'furra".
But not many would rhyme 'die' and 'day'! :-)
> My feeling is that in attempting > to do justice to the spelling of the word, some users, news > readers in particular, create verbal nightmares.
I've read and noticed it's a tendency of 'educated' speakers in the US. Once I was watching an interview with an American scientist and she said things like '...shIUn', for 'information', for instance, and it's very frequent to hear 'OL', as in 'all' for ending "-ALs", instead of the schwa, as in POTENTIAL.
> A rhyme with 'burrow' strikes me as an attempt to > feel good about having accommodated the spelling of the > 'ough' part of 'thorough', in which case I'd have to ask you > how you pronounce 'rough'. : ) "Ruff", I hope?
But you shouldn't forget that there is a tendency of all colonized countries to keep older forms of the language, both in pronunciation and grammar, and also spelling, and to have an independent evolution from the same basis. Many things we say in Brazil are exactly the way the Portuguese spoke in the 1500's, when our colonization started. When it comes to the US, you hear things like 'gotten' and regular forms of verbs ( burned, etc ) that are older forms of the language. The British dropped 'gotten' and exchanged 'burnt' for 'burned' because their people had 'bad English' ( which became standard because educated people were 'contaminated' ). Americans didn't create that. The British corrupted the language, and still do it much more than Americans ( not pronouncing the ending Rs is another 'mistake' that became standard, as well as the unpronounced ending vowels in French. Had the French been literate in the past and they'd probably distinguish plurals when speaking ).
Sociolinguists have long abandoned the belief of ONE standard LANGUAGE and many dialects. Now they know it's many different dialects and a standard one. If that's true within one society, why to expect ONE LANGUAGE from different societies.
Bye,
Caio Rossi
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