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