Date: Mon, 24 Nov 1997 15:44:04 -0500 From: Pat Courts Subject: Re: "wh" Mark, your story about "huwa" for whore reminded me of an incident that occurred many years abo when I was stil at Michigan sTate U. Wandering through the building in which the ESL classes were held, I heard this chorus of students repeating, "woont, woont, woont" (dobl "oo" sounding like the "o" in "do." I peeked int o see that a friend of mine was teachng the class, so later on I asked what the hell he was doing with this "woont" stuff. Well (or was it "why"), says he, "I was trying to teach them how to pronounce "woont," you know, like in "I woont (won't) do it." I am from Chicago and therefore speak Standard English--I, of course, corrected him immediately. Unfortunately, he thought I spoke strangely too. At 02:42 PM 11/24/97 -0500, Mark Mandel wrote: >I'll always remember in the mid 60s seeing a graffito in NYC, around >104th St. and Broadway: > > YOUR MOTHER IS A HUWA > >That puzzled me for a very long time, till I finally "heard" it mentally with >the appropriate accent and intonation to match something I had actually >heard. > > 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/ > Cheers, Pat Courts