Yumid

[Garrett Wollman]

<<On Mon, 3 Sep 2012 12:30:03 -0400, Elliot Abrams <elliotabrams@gmail.com> said:

> President Eisenhower said nukular as well!
> But who am I to cast stones? My humid comes out as Yumid.

That's perfectly ordinary h-dropping, which occurs in numerous
dialects around the world.  (The "standard" pronunciation is /hju-/,
and the h-dropping pronunciation is precisely /ju-/.)

Similarly, Barbara Marcin always used to say "hut" /hVt/ for "hot";
Bill Labov could probably pinpoint exactly where she grew up to have
learned that pronunciation.  (I'm pretty sure that there's a U.S.
dialect region that makes that precise substitution consistently where
standard pronunciation has /A/ in stressed syllables.)

The one that I can't account for is Barry Burbank's "hairicane"
/'hEirI,kEin/ for "hurricane" -- but he says it consistently, so
that's probably how they say it wherever he grew up.

-GAWollman