Re: "write him" was Re: More questions

Tristan McLeay scripsit:

> The thing I'm more concerned about: in dialects that use 'faucet' and
> distinguish short o from au (i.e. say bot and bought differently), which
> vowel does faucet have?
Well, I fall into the right category, I think; I unround short o's but
not long ones, so [bAt] but [bO:t] (I have no length distinction
on O -- they are all long).  I say ['fOsIt] ~ ['fOs@t].

> it has been
> borrowed from American English, whose au sounds almost identical to our
> short o (e.g. I had to translate from American English /stOk/ to AusE
> /sto:k/---stalk---last night for my brother while watching tv, because
> 'stock' didn't make sense in context).
Right enough.  Per contra, /sto:k/ out of context would be heard as "stoke"
here.

> 'Valve' is such a technical term.
Valves are technical things.  How often do you have to shut off the water
to your whole house, unless you are a weekender in a cold climate and have
to worry about pipes freezing?  The reason we use faucets/taps/spigots
in sinks and bathtubs is that it takes too much strength to open and
close the metal-to-metal seal that a valve provides.

--
John Cowan  www.ccil.org/~cowan  www.reutershealth.com  jcowan@reutershealth.com
We want more school houses and less jails; more books and less arsenals;
more learning and less vice; more constant work and less crime; more
leisure and less greed; more justice and less revenge; in fact, more of
the opportunities to cultivate our better natures.  --Samuel Gompers