[I just posted this on Wheel of Fortune's contact page.]
On yesterday's show one puzzle included the word "embroidered." An African American woman solved the puzzle but pronounced this word so that it sounded like "emroided." I believe that this happened because her underlying dialect (African American English) doesn't allow [r] before a consonant. Pat Sajak (or the judges?) ruled it a "wrong pronunciation." I believe this was a very serious error, not only in that the couple missed getting the round but also that a legitimate variety of English was dismissed as "wrong." Her rendering was approximately [ɪmˡbrɔɪdəd].
I wonder whether someone from Boston, who might have pronounced it similarly, would also have been declared "wrong."
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
-
OK, somebody has to say it. 17 years ago close to 3,000 people died largely because the US was unprepared for an attack of that kind, or for...
-
The internet news site Common Dreams carried an article recently about a group of students from Liberty University visiting the Smithsonia...
-
I may write more about this later, but for now just examine the differences. Later... (added on Oct 9, 2010): Essentially, in apes the l...
No comments:
Post a Comment
Comments and feedback are welcome, as long as they conform to normal standards of civility and decency. I will delete comments that do not meet these standards.