Thus, when in a recent email my mother coined the term "blahg" -- get it? I had to find out how she pronounced it, so I asked her, ever so innocently (This blog is a secret: don't tell my parents! Or my adviser!) if "blahg" and "blog" are pronounced the same. She said they were.
Does this mean she has the "cot/caught" merger? No, and I can attest she doesn't, nor should she; she's from Barrington, Illinois, what was a small town when she lived there and is now an outer northwest suburb of Chicago, definitively in unmerged territory. Rather, this means that "blog" and, implicitly, "log" in her dialect have the "cot" vowel. Me, I would definitely pronounce "blahg" and "blog" differently -- "log" and "blog" are "caught" words for me.
Thus I propose that there is an isogloss dividing the western suburbs of Chicago from the rest of the Chicagoland area, which I will call the "blahg/blog" isogloss. Since I am making up facts, I will further suggest that this isogloss is in the same place as the one delimiting the occurrence of positive 'anymore' in Chicagoland. So we see that there is actually an isogloss bundle running roughly (why not?) along I-294, or maybe the Cook/Du Page county line. This isogloss reflects cultural differences and historic settlement patterns, though I can't say which ones. Boy, making up facts is fun. Here's a map:
How's that for armchair dialectology? The closest thing to data behind this map comes from my Positive 'Anymore' Unscientific Survey Experiment (PAUSE), which clearly shows that people from the city of Chicago and the inner suburbs think they don't use positive 'anymore' and in fact probably don't, though anymore it's hard to tell.
8 comments:
Whereas, you know, I do have the caught-cot merger, but I'd pronounce blahg and blog differently.
Fascinating -- how are they different? I'm guessing that the vowel in "blahg" is raised, fronted, or both. Am I right?
Fronted, of course. As in father.
Queenie -
1a. My mother was in fact the first person I noticed using PA. Of course, I was fourteen at the time. This means that either she acquired it recently, or that I just never noticed. Probably the latter.
1b. Good point. In fact, my mom does not rhyme log and jog.
2. Oh well. Too bad, (not that I have much at stake here.)
3. I think I didn't hear the word 'blog' until I moved to New York; that might have something to do with it. In fact, just now my wife said something about my bl/oh/g, and she's definitely a cot/caught merging type. Just to be sure, I asked her where the word "blog" comes from to make her say "log," and she said "lahg," as I expected. So I think your second hypothesis is right.
'Hugog' rhymes with 'jog.'
AJD -
Fronted as in 'father', eh? How do you say "blog," then?
Back and round, as in cot!
(Word verification word: "yzrpc", which is probably the name of a Serbian costume designer.)
Your folks don't know about your blog?
Chocolate Lady -
Nope, the 'rents don't know. Yet. Funny story, actually. At first I didn't tell them about it because I didn't tell anyone, and now I can't tell them because they'll wonder why I didn't tell them before. Isn't it ironic? Don't you think?
Queenie -
Yes! The Cal-Sag Fan! I think I read about that somewhere -- has to do with the High Chicago Shift or something...
My word verification word is "bzpepy," which I think is Old Church Slavonic for "lacking pep."
Credit where credit is due: Much as I would like to claim ownership, my husband Frinkenstein came up with hottie/haughty. He's often clever that way.
And FYI, I was just in Morris, Illinois, where I heard my dad use positive anymore twice in two days.
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