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From: lilandbr@scn.org (Leland Bryant Ross)
Subject: AmEng phones:  Kansan GuArantor
Message-ID: <DwB5Hq.Ktu@scn.org>
Sender: news@scn.org
Reply-To: lilandbr@scn.org (Leland Bryant Ross)
Organization: Seattle Community Network
Date: Sun, 18 Aug 1996 00:32:13 GMT
Lines: 31


In his acceptance speech, Bob Dole called the free enterprise system "the 
best guarantor (/'ga: r@n tOR/) of our freedom."  How widespread is this 
"'ga:" pronunciation?

In my idiolect (and I think the normal dialect of the US N West Coast), 
the first two syllables of |guarantor| rhyme with the woman's name 
|Karen|, and the first syllable rhymes with |care|; its vowel is what I 
think of as a "short E" (AmEng lexicographers' e-breve, IPA epsilon, 
ASCII /E/) sound with a R-colored schwa off-glide.

The American Heritage Dictionary describes |care| as (kar) with a 
circumflex on the a, but the first syllable of |guarantor| as (gar...) 
with a breve on the a; obviously neither of these is meant to describe 
Dole's pronunciation, where the first syllable in |guarantor| rhymed with 
an R-dropping pronunciation of |far| and the first two syllables --

     the first R in his |guarantor| seemed to me clearly to belong to
     the second syllable

-- rhymed with a "D-dropping" pronunciation of |far and (wide)|.  
Incidentally, occasionally I hear |foreign| pronounced to rhyme with 
Dole's |guaran(tor)|...

Leland

--
Liland Brajant ROS'                "Sed krom se iuj el la  homoj  malsategas,
P O Box 30091                      kiel do la socio povas posedi strukturon?"
Seattle, WA 98103 Usono            -Gulivero (Ted Danson) en la nova televida
Tel. (206) 633-2434                 versio,  citita  en  "Baptist Peacemaker"
