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)