Date:  Sat, 5 Mar 1994 15:29:07 -0600

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

Subject: Re: Epiphany on the Tennis Court



>     Happens to me every time I teach phonemic transcription, and play-act

> at producing [tEn] for the benefit of my class. It is an insidious thing.



I have a very hard time coming out with that [E] when trying to explain

to my students that some people make a distinction between "ten" and

"tin." Usually I can find a yankee in the class to demonstrate it for

them.



> as necessarily /aen/. Sometimes after a bout of phonemic transcription,

> I even start restoring the long-lost /h/ before /w/!



Interesting. I've never lost that [h]. It took me forever to catch on

to a sign in a shop window one time that I knew must be some kind of a

pun that I wasn't catching. I can't remember now what it said except

that the first "word" in it was the letter Y. I stared and stared and

finally realized that it was supposed to stand for "why." The pun didn't

work for me.

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