The Death of the short "a"

Some people like to pretend that the place they're from doesn't have an accent. This is actually linguistically impossible.  It made the ELang major smile when he came to our apartment to collect survey answers for his dialect study.  The survey asked things like, "Where are you from?", "Do people in your hometown have an accent?", "Does the accent of your hometown sound educated, uneducated, or make no implication?", "Are there any parts of the United States where the accent makes people sound less uneducated?", etc.  We also got to fill out a map of the US and mark all the accents.  One of the questions was, "Is there any place where there is no accent?" When I answered "linguistically impossible," and explained why, he smiled.  I also learned that that line that people give in Seattle about how newscasters are taught to speak like they're from Seattle because it's neutral is something that everyone believes about their dialect.  Even NoCal, which is a disgusting accent, if you ask me.

Anyways, the only part of this survey that I wasn't completely honest with (and I know that that's bad of me), is when he asked me if there are places that have accents that sound uneducated.  I dodged the question with, "Well, a lot of people think that the deep south sounds uneducated, and maybe some more hicksy rancher accents and such."  This is because I knew that the person giving the survey was from Salt Lake City, and had a Utah accent.  But if I had to be honest, I would have to say "Utah."  There is no "k" on the end of "thinking."  And the vowel in "milk" is an "i."  And the vowel in "feel" is a long "e."

But I think that the one that weirds me out the most is the pathological fear they seem to have of the short a.  My name is Hannah.  And it is pronounced /hænə/.  The a is short.  It's not /hɑ:nə/ with a long, dark a.  I know that maybe the long, dark a is a slightly prettier sound.  But it isn't the actual sound in my name.  And every time someone bears their testimony about the boy who lived in PAUL-myra, New York, I want to say, "FYI, it's PAL-myra.  I know PAUL-myra may be prettier, but you should hear people actually from there say it, and you'd want to cry.  They say PAAL-myra."

But the one that made me almost want to laugh was last week.  Did you know that I play the piano for the ward choir?  Well, I do.  It's not a second calling, it's an assignment.  I don't mind, but anyways, last week, the choir was getting ready, and they were trying to find their spots.  A girl from Not-Utah said, "Where are the altos sitting?"  a girl from Utah said, "Oh, I'm a AHL-toh."  No.  You're not.  You're an AL-toh.  At least in the case of Hannah, it would have been pronounced with a dark a in Hebrew.  But even in Latin, where alto comes from the word altus, it has a short a.

I know that long a's are prettier.  But the short has a purpose.  You, as Utahns, with the help of Californians have already collapsed out the long e, the dark o, the open o, and merged all short e's to ɛ.  Not to mention the cot-caught merger (disclaimer: my dialect has the cot-caught merger.  But when I try to explain to Californians or Utahns what the cot-caught merger is, they can't even hear the difference.  Maybe I can hear it because my dad hasn't cot-caught merged).   In all, they have approximately four vowels.  You think I'm kidding, but I'm actually not--I'm actually being generous with four.

I don't even know if this makes sense.  But it made me feel better.