Date:    Tue, 17 Mar 1998 11:28:33 EST
<br>From:    RonButters  RonButters[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]AOL.COM 
<br>Subject: DES MOINES/NINE
<br>
<br>I don't think that a merger of /ay/ and /oy/ is typical of 19th century
<br>Midwesrtern. Probably we are just dealing with an off-rhyme here.
<br>
<br>However the author pronounced DES MOINES and NINE, they would not have rhymed.
<br>Today /oy/ and /ay/ are phonemically distinct in the Midwest, so it seems
<br>likely (though not totally certain) that they did not merge completely in the
<br>19th century and then split again in the 20th. I can't prove it, but my memory
<br>of my great-grandmother Bishop's speech (she was born in 1860 in Northfield,
<br>Minnesota, and lived most of her life in east central Iowa [Linn County]) is
<br>that she had no merger of /oy/ and /ay/.
<br>