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[Clansgian AT wmconnect.com]

> >You
> don't like being pointed out as wrong even on the smallest, most
> insiginificant point.

That cuts both ways.

>But, James on this small, most insignificant
> point you are.

Sorry, but I'm not.  See below.


> 
> Here is an explanation from an article in Slate.com:
> http://www.slate.com/id/2071155/
> 
> 

I'm afraid your reference hasn't been paying close attention and seems to 
know little of comparative linguistics.  

At a university here in the South, a professor .... eh ..... not from the 
South who taught a course in, of all things, phonetics, said when he came 
here he 
thought people were laughing at him instead of greeting him.  Every time they 
saw him they said 'ha!'.  Even well versed in phonetics, he found it almost 
impossible to hear the difference between the way the Applachian folk said 
"Hah" and "Hi".  It sounded exactly the same to him.

It's not.

You will find that if you say "Hi" in the usual pronuciation, you are making 
two vowel sounds, sort of like "ha:-ee".  This diphthong does not occur in 
all 
dialects of English.  Instead in many Southern dialects, the first sound is 
repeated to make the syllable long enough.  It is like "Ha:a:".   The sound 
of 
'a;', the first part of the diphthong of the words "I" or "eye" or "hi", does 
not occur by itself in most dialects of English so the speaker's ear 
interprets it as close as he can to what he's used to hearing.  So "Hi" 
sounds to them 
like "Hah".  But it isn't.

The point being that our ears are trained from birth to hear language sounds 
and put them into pigeon holes.  If we hear a language sound that deviates 
from what we are used to dealing with, we put it int he nearest pigeon hole 
and 
swear that indeed is what we heard.

I've heard may times Bush being jibbed for saying nu-cyou-ler, but that's not 
what he's saying.  That's as close as the Non-Texan ear can come to hearing 
what he is saying which is   nu-cl'er.   'L' is linguisiclally a semivowel 
and 
can be heard as another syllable.

I hope, Rob, you can see I have a bowing acquaintance with all this.   I have 
not given you just a half-baked internet reference, I've discussed the 
particulars.  You are perfectly welcome label my observations as wrong, I'm 
not one 
of those who thinks you are reaching through the computer to punch me in the 
nose if you disagree.  But you do so credibly when you discuss the 
particulars 
rather than gainsaying with URL.  As you know, if one gets into the game of 
deuling URL's there's no limit to it and no point either.   Pointing to 
information is good, but the author of your blurb isn't here to be questioned 
so its 
just you and me.


James   </HTML>