Date: Wed, 6 Dec 1995 08:48:35 CST
From: Lisa Pogoff POGOFFL[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]MDH-ENVH.HEALTH.STATE.MN.US
Subject: Re: name's the same
'bIuhg.'
I've never heard this pronunciation for 'bag' here in MN. The usual
pronunciation here is [be:g] (It's a scream to hear a bunch of Minnesota
kids say the the "Pledge of Allegiance" to the [fle:g]!). When my oldest
son was in first grade, one of his spelling words was 'bag'. When the
teacher, a MN-sotan, pronounced the word, he naturally wrote b-e-g , which
is what he heard her say. So, his perfect score was dashed because of
dialect interference.
What's really interesting, tho, is that when my wife and I asked the
teacher about this at parent/teacher conference, the teacher could hear
no difference between her pronunciation [beg] and ours [baeg]!
Fritz Juengling
Upon moving to MN, I was surprised to hear my co-workers pronounce
the male name "Don" and the female name "Dawn" exactly the same way.
Are they also pronounced the same in other parts of the country?