Re: British pronunciation of "not" [was: Re: The last word on cot/caught]

On Mon, 24 Apr 2006 22:49:28 -0700, Bob Cunningham
<exw6sxq@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> said:

On 24 Apr 2006 19:49:57 -0700, "Andrew Usher"
<k_over_hbarc@xxxxxxxxx> said:

Bob Cunningham wrote:

I suppose "English English" would be a little better, but
not much, since dialectal variation in England itself is
said to be very great. "Southern English" narrows the range
somewhat, but-if I remember right--Cornwall is in southern
England. (Hear charming Cornwall speech at
http://www.alt-usage-english.org/archive/arth_cs8.mp3 .)

Sounds more American than British, I think. Excepting some RP-isms, the
only serious differences I noticed were h-dropping and that 'oy' for
/ai/. He even had /or/ in 'or' words.

There is a genetic affinity between AmE and western England, isn't
there?

I've read somewhere that American speech varieties came
about partly because the corresponding regions were mainly
inhabited by people from a particular part of England. I'll
assume that Cornish is an important one of the influencing
dialects, but only because you think so.

The Cornish speech in the Audio Archive doesn't sound much
like that of any American I've ever heard, but it's easy to
believe that similarities would be more apparent to an
Englishman than to an American.

If I remember correctly, the late Alistair Cooke has said
that Americans thought he sounded like an Englishman and
Englishmen thought he sounded like an American.

Incidentally, I've used the word "Cornish" because that's
what the Audio Archive uses, but I'm not comfortable with
it, because Cornish was a Celtic language that has gone
extinct a couple of centuries or so ago. As opposed to the
Celtic language Cornish, the speech sample in the Audio
Archive is a variety of English, so I question whether it
should be called "Cornish".

But what should we call it, "Cornwall English"?

· (Modern efforts to construct a "revived" Cornish don't
alter the fact that there are no longer any native speakers
of the true Cornish. I think I've read that the "revivers"
can't be sure how close their constructed Cornish is to true
Cornish, presumably because they have no sound files and
insufficient, if any, written evidence of true Cornish for
comparison.)

.

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