Peter T. Daniels scripsit:

> That one's easy, because everyone has to learn their state capitals
> early on.

Bah. I certainly never stuffed my brain with such inconsequentialities.
My father-in-law from Cleveland (born 1922) knows them all pour s'amuser,
but *he* was surprised when I corrected his [pi'jEr\] to [pir]. And my
father (born in Philadelphia, 1904), despite being A.B., B.A., M.A.,
Ph.D., LL.B., S.J.D., never learned them at all.

> Somewhere on *Curb Your Enthusiasm* Season 2 DVD (I think it's where I
> saw it, since I don't watch reruns on TV) someone claims to be from
> Chic[a]go, which proves the actor doesn't know from Chicago, where the
> name of the city is Chic[O]go.

Well, AFAIK it's a class distinction -- lower-class people use [a] ~ [A];
middle- and upper-class ones use [O] ~ [Q]. The name of New Orleans
exhibits even more complex variation.

--
De plichten van een docent zijn divers, John Cowan
die van het gehoor ook. cowan@...
--Edsger Dijkstra http://www.ccil.org/~cowan