Zompist Bboard Again

Glass Half Baked wrote: ↑Wed Feb 26, 2025 5:52 pm California was just an example. I know it's found in various places (though I wasn't, as I stated, consciously aware of the merger as a child). The real question IMO is, since western dialects merge counterclockwise, and eastern dialects merge clockwise, should we consider these two separate changes?

jcb wrote: ↑Tue Feb 18, 2025 1:59 pm Indeed, I thought that the spelling distinction between <o> and <au> was just an aesthetic spelling difference, like <ee> and <ea>, or <oCe> and <oa>, and nothing more. (Is there any dialect left in the English-speaking world that hasn't merged REED and READ, or LODE and LOAD?)

Travis B. wrote: ↑Thu Feb 27, 2025 9:33 am I personally feel kind of sad about the loss of dialect diversity in English, and conversely this is why I insist on resisting further standardization in my own speech (even though there are areas where my own speech has undergone clear evidence of influence from StE, such as the fact that I only use the dialect /ˈhʌnər(d)/ for hundred in forming numbers like 'three hundred and sixty five' whereas people of my parents' generation here, even ones whose speech is overall relatively standard, use /ˈhʌnər(d)/ more generally). When I hear people like my daughter speak I can definitely tell that there is further influence from StE, e.g. she lacks the classic Milwaukee [ja(:)] and her pronunciation of sorry is with /ɑr/ rather than /ɔr/; of course, this may be an effect of that she's been growing up in Waukesha rather than Milwaukee county.

jcb wrote: ↑Thu Feb 27, 2025 11:22 am

Travis B. wrote: ↑Thu Feb 27, 2025 9:33 am I personally feel kind of sad about the loss of dialect diversity in English, and conversely this is why I insist on resisting further standardization in my own speech (even though there are areas where my own speech has undergone clear evidence of influence from StE, such as the fact that I only use the dialect /ˈhʌnər(d)/ for hundred in forming numbers like 'three hundred and sixty five' whereas people of my parents' generation here, even ones whose speech is overall relatively standard, use /ˈhʌnər(d)/ more generally). When I hear people like my daughter speak I can definitely tell that there is further influence from StE, e.g. she lacks the classic Milwaukee [ja(:)] and her pronunciation of sorry is with /ɑr/ rather than /ɔr/; of course, this may be an effect of that she's been growing up in Waukesha rather than Milwaukee county.

Does your daughter merge COT and CAUGHT? (I recall reading/watching somewhere that the CAUGHT-COT merger is catching on more with the youth.)