Re: Knowing your oranges.

On Sun, 3 Feb 2008 12:28:19 +0000 (UTC) in
alt.usage.english Richard Fontana <me@xxxxxxxxxxx> typed:

Garrett Wollman sez:
Taking the thread for a drift, one of my co-workers pronounces "kiosk"
/'kAI Osk/ rather than the standard AmE /'ki: Osk/.

Both British and American dictionaries* have [i:] for the
first vowel, but American dictionaries have [A:] for the
second vowel, while _NSOED_ has [O] for the second vowel.

I wonder if you, Garrett, meant to put the dictionary vowel
of "saw" (and my vowel in "port"), [O], in "kiosk". American
dictionaries seem unanimous in giving it the first vowel in
"father", [A:].

You can hear the _AHD4_'s pronunciation at
http://www.bartleby.com/61/30/K0073000.html , and the
Merriam-Webster's at http://m-w.com/dictionary/kiosk . They
both sound like the vowel in "father" to me.

Interesting to see, though, _AHD4_ has alternative
pronunciations with the same vowels but one with stress on
the first syllable, the other on the second. I wouldn't
expect to hear an American pronounce it with stress on the
second syllable. But there are a couple of hundred million
or so Americans I haven't heard speak.

In CINC AmE, of course, it's /'ki,Ask/, and would probably also be so
notated in SparkE.

I would pronounce "kiosk" with the vowels American
dictionaries give it, ['ki:,A:sk].

My American English dialect is CINC, "court" is not "cart".
R-losers (nonrhoticians) might have "court" and
"caught"--and "cart" and "cot"--as homonyms, so that when I
say "'court' is not 'cart'", they might think I'm saying
"'caught' is not 'cot'".

By the way, I seem to have coined a word, "nonrhotician". I
don't find it in any dictionary, including the _Oxford
English Dictionary_ and the ones at onelook.com, and I also
don't get any hits on it with either vanilla Google or
DejaGoogle. Is there a better word for a speaker who is
nonrhotic? I mean besides "R-loser".

*
American:
_American Heritage Dictionary 4th Edition_, _AHD4_
British:
_New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary_, _NSOED_
.

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