Ph.D. wrote:

>
> Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> >
> > /eh/ and /ey/ respectively, if you know about Smith-Trager phonemic
> > notation; I have not been able to discover what the standard phonetic
> > representation of the New York distinction between <can> 'be able' /k&n/
> > and 'food container' /kehn/; the latter is the usual Midwestern
> > pronounciation of both vowels, but not even in Chicago does <can> rhyme
> > with <cane> /ey/.
>
> I've lived the the Midwest all my life, specifically southeastern Michigan.
>
> Everyone around here says /k&n/ for "food container" and /kehn/ for
> "be able to," except the contraction <can't> is /k&nt/.

So Detroit is the opposite of NYC. Interesting. In Chicago, there is
only one phoneme, and it comes out as the pronunciation that in NY goes
with /eh/. The soda/pop line also runs through Michigan somewhere.
--
Peter T. Daniels grammatim@...