Re: Barbara Bush Re: ASCII convention

Christian Weisgerber wrote:
>
> Peter T. Daniels <grammatim@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> > Last month she notoriously commented that the hurricane refugees in the
> > Houston Astrodome were "probably better off" than they had been in their
> > homes, because they were "underprivileged."
>
> Well, better than calling them "poor", which would be very much
> politically incorrect, I guess.
>
> Which brings me to the American English pronunciation of "poor".
> The last few times I heard that word mentioned on US TV shows it
> sounded an awful lot like "pour". Is there a poor/pour merger going
> on in General American or regionally?

No; /uw/ is [uw] mostly, but [O] widely (mostly "Southern") as well.
--
Peter T. Daniels grammatim@xxxxxxx
.

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