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From: Athel Cornish-Bowden <me@yahoo.com>
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Galveston
Date: Mon, 24 Mar 2025 18:50:48 +0100
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On 2025-03-24 14:15:10 +0000, Christian Weisgerber said:

> On 2025-03-22, Ruud Harmsen <rh@rudhar.com> wrote:
> 
>> This also reminds me of a discussion we had years ago, about Memphis
>> sounding like Memphus, in a song sung by Cher. Unthinkable in
>> South-Brit. The THIS and THUS vowels are always distinct there.

The city of Los Angeles is a case in point. Most British people 
pronounce the last syllable like "lees" /lɪjz/ (unless they've lived 
there). Most Californians pronounce it as "ləs" -- the whole name as 
/lə'sænd͡ʒləs/.

There can also be variations between neighbouring states. Californians 
usually pronounce the state of Oregon with "gone" as the last syllable, 
but that annoys some Oregonians, who say "gən" (confusingly, for 
British speakers, writing it as "gun").
> 
> It's a bit more complicated, as Geoff Lindsey points out in
> _English After RP_.  On the one hand, Standard Southern British has
> replaced KIT with schwa in many words, e.g. the second vowel in
> "foreign"

yes

>  and "arbitrary"

no, not for me, unless by "second" you mean "third".

> , and increasingly in the endings -et,
> -est, -less, -ness, -red, -ress.  On the other hand, the distinction
> itself is maintained and contrasts minimal pairs such as "teaches"
> (KIT) and "teachers" (schwa), or "Lenin" and "Lennon".


-- 
Athel -- French and British, living in Marseilles for 38 years; mainly 
in England until 1987.