Date: Mon, 24 Nov 1997 14:35:18 -0500

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

Subject: Merzouri



Donald M. Lance enlightens me:



This hook-less 3 in stressed and unstressed versions is what I'm claiming the Cracker in the story

used. I also would

imagine the Cracker to have quite a "drawl," i.e., lengthening of these syllables so that these

pronunciations were

salient for his tormenter, along with the salience of his spellings 'ternups' and 'pertaters'.





Aha! Thank you. Now all is clear... or at least clearer than ternip and tater stew. With or without

crackers.



I haven't heard a stressed r-less mid vowel in any US dialect I would call southern. I'm not a

dialectologist, so I take

my ignorance for granted when dealing with those who are or who have relevant experience, such

as the

respected netizens of this List. In trying to hear [t'3n[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]p] in my mind's ear, all I could come up

with was "Yankee"!



Mark A. Mandel : Senior Linguist : 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/

Personal home page: http://world.std.com/~mam/