Date: Thu, 17 Feb 1994 04:58:17 -0600

From: Natalie Maynor maynor[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]RA.MSSTATE.EDU

Subject: Re: [u]/[ju]



Everyone will first tell you to check PEAS first, or you might look

for a quick-shot at the McDavid supplement to Nelson Francis' grammar (the

summary charts actually prepared by E. Bagby Atwood, though uncredited).



Thanks for the suggestions. Somebody else sent me private mail mentioning

an article by Ann Pitts in -American Speech-. I'm going to look for it

when I get to my office today.



I'm a /yuw/ speaker (I don't like them furrin IPA symbols), but have been

amused at newscasters who get things mixed up and report the /nyuwn nuwz/.



I also am a /ju/ speaker (I don't know what to do with OE or French if I

let the /y/ move over to /j/). What has gotten me interested in this

subject was that two different Canadians recently have said that they

thought that all US speakers pronounced words like "news" as [nuz]. It's

funny that these two people mentioned this at about the same time, one

in direct e-mail and the other on WORDS-L. The comment on WORDS-L started

a discussion of the topic in which many USAers said yes, that they did

say [nuz] and were confident it was the common US pronunciation. That

surprised me. Although I've certainly heard it, I hear [njuz] far more

often -- I think. We also got into some interesting discussions of which

words seem to use [u] in all dialects, which vary, and why.

--Natalie (maynor[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]ra.msstate.edu)