Wednesday, February 4, 2009

Bev Mo

There is a California based alcohol retailer called Bev Mo. They usually run ads on local radio stations like KGO 810 and KMEL. Having trained a bit in hearing sounds, I've often noticed it is pronounced as Beb Mo. Lame pronunciation books, worthless english phonology books don't discuss these real examples; instead, they focus on discrete sounds, some trivial phonological patterns. Bailey talks about this in his phonetic transcription and in his many articles: stops becoming fricatives; fricatives becoming stops.

gov(ern)ment
haven't
Bev mo

In all of the above, v becomes b. /b/ is a corresponding stop to fricative /v/.

Then, there is another phenomenon: stop becoming fricative.

/k/ in worker becomes fricative /x/.

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