Date: Fri, 13 Sep 1996 09:56:39 -0500

From: Mark Mandel Mark[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]DRAGONSYS.COM

Subject: "Houston"



A lot of Americans have merged #hy into #y, following the same path as

#hw - #w. In the 70s I did my graduate work (with students from all

over) at Berkeley, where there is a long tradition of work with American

Indian languages, and the homophony for many of "human languages"

with "Yuman languages" was a standing joke.



Taking Houston from another angle, I grew up in NYC, where one way

to tell the locals from the out-of-towners is that only the latter speak of

/haw'st[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]n/ Street ("house"-ton)

as

/hyuw'st[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]n/ Street.



Mark A. Mandel : mark[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]dragonsys.com

Dragon Systems, Inc. : speech recognition : +1 617 965-5200

320 Nevada St., Newton, MA 02160, USA : http://www.dragonsys.com/