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Path: utzoo!linus!decvax!tektronix!tekecs!dce
From: dce@tekecs.UUCP (David Elliott)
Newsgroups: net.nlang
Subject: Re: regional homonyms?
Message-ID: <2175@tekecs.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 25-Sep-83 14:36:11 EDT
Article-I.D.: tekecs.2175
Posted: Sun Sep 25 14:36:11 1983
Date-Received: Tue, 27-Sep-83 03:55:27 EDT
References: umcp-cs.2709
Lines: 15


In the South, "pin" and "pen" are homonyms, though they are not always
pronounced "piyn". Southern English has no real separate 'en' and 'in'.

All 'en' and 'in' words contain the same 'i' sound as in 'kid'. This
is confusing to some people. For example, the names "Jenny" and "Ginny"
(short for Virginia) are pronounced the same. One time I tried to
find a word with 'en' that had the same vowel as in "head", but I
could not think of one.

Therefore, Southern English has the following phonetic transformation :

	e -> i / __n

			David