Date: Mon, 4 Dec 1995 13:14:29 EST

From: flanigan[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]OUVAXA.CATS.OHIOU.EDU

Subject: On Wisconsin!



Ohio University Electronic Communication





Date: 04-Dec-1995 01:14pm EST



To: Remote Addressee ( _mx%"ads-l[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]uga.cc.uga.edu" )



From: Beverly Flanigan Dept: Linguistics

FLANIGAN Tel No:



Subject: On Wisconsin!





As a Minnesotan, and a (lapsed) Lutheran at that, I've always said

"wi-scon-sin," as do my Wisconsin relatives and two recent graduate

students from that state. Hence my surprise (on the NP only) when an

interviewee in "American Tongues" said that "people from Wis-con-sin

all sound like Norwegians." But, unlike Beth, I never heard an open

'o' in the middle syllable (only [kan]), even though I and my

generation of Minnesotans still distinguish between 'ah' and 'aw'.

BTW, since the name is from an American Indian language, perhaps

someone knows whether the original had an initial consonant cluster in

the second syllable or, as Larry Horn suggests, the [s] has shifted to

the stressed syllable.



On my way to checking out the state name in my (old) Webster's New

World (which divides the syllables between 's' and 'c'), I came across

"whore," which is etymologized as "ME & AS 'hore'; ON 'hora'; for

the wh- sp., cf. 'whole'; akin to G. 'hure'; IE base *qa-, to like, be

fond of, desire, seen also in L. 'carus,' dear...orig. prob. a

euphemism" -- all of which would seem to support Rudy Troike's

pre-Latin hypothesis with spelling analogy.







Received: 04-Dec-1995 01:14pm