Date: Sun, 21 Jul 1996 13:19:26 -0400

From: "M. Lynne Murphy" 104LYN[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]MUSE.ARTS.WITS.AC.ZA

Subject: Re: waft



peter patrick asks:



Can anyone think of common words ending in "-aft" which take

the /ah/ vowel in American English? I'm stumped. Which suggests that

anyone who gets their spelling pronunciation by analogy is very likely

to end up with the /ae/ one, like me; cf. "craft, daft, haft, aft" etc.



everytime i think i've thought of one i realize how unamericanised

i've become lately. (i keep thinking "draft!--there's one!") what

about quaff? (not -aft, but i'm not sure the 't' is relevant.) do

southerners have an [ae] there too? (waft and quaff'd rhyme for me.)



my question is: what explains that the "ah" sound was either kept

or (re-)introduced in northern u.s. english, when other "ah"s before

[f]s weren't (draft, laugh)? my feeling is that the "ah" is more

sound-symbolic for the meaning than the [ae] is.



lynne



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