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From: riddle@ut-sally.UUCP (Prentiss Riddle)
Newsgroups: net.nlang
Subject: Re: 'enry 'iggins in America
Message-ID: <476@ut-sally.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 12-Dec-84 23:14:17 EST
Article-I.D.: ut-sally.476
Posted: Wed Dec 12 23:14:17 1984
Date-Received: Sun, 16-Dec-84 06:38:11 EST
References: <2712@ucla-cs.ARPA>
Organization: U. of Tx. at Houston-in-the-Hills
Lines: 20

My sister and I spent our early childhood in Fort Worth, Texas, then moved a
relatively short distance away to a town in Oklahoma.  Our mother and father
are from Dallas, Texas, and from northern Louisiana, respectively.  Shortly
after our arrival in Stillwater, my sister and I discovered that we were the
only people in our acquaintance who pronounced certain words -- forest,
orange, porridge, and even forehead -- with an "ar" sound as in "far" rather
than an "or" sound as in "for".  Neither our parents nor any of our classmates
pronounced these words like we did.  Years later, we both moved back to Texas
-- Dallas and Austin, specifically -- and expected to find that everyone else
pronounced these words like us.  No dice.  I've since been told that this
pronunciation is peculiar to natives of Fort Worth.  Given the fluidity of the
population in this part of the country and how near Fort Worth is to Dallas, I
find this surprising.  Can anyone else corroborate it or offer an explanation?

By the way, it appears that you can tell a Houstonite from a real Texan [:-)]
because Houstonites call their home town "YOO-stun," while everyone else says
"HYOO-stun."

--- Prentiss Riddle ("Aprendiz de todo, maestro de nada.")
--- {ihnp4,harvard,seismo,gatech,ctvax}!ut-sally!riddle