Friday, August 07, 2015
No, it's not Ronald Raven
I don't feel like defending Rick Perry this time. He has abandoned all of the good points he made in 2012. This time he's simply copying the daily party script, like everyone else except Trump. I don't need candidates to read the daily RNC emails for me; I can read them directly.
Nevertheless, the idiotic claim that he said Raven for Reagan is nonsense.
In rapid or sloppy speech a solid /g/, a velar stop, often slips into a soft /ɣ/, a velar fricative. And as Polistra noted in a different context last year:
The voiced velar fricative /ɣ/ is a delicate sound. Its fate depends on its necessity. In languages like Arabic where it's part of the grid, alternating clearly with /χ/, it tends to stick around. In languages where it's a transition or an allophone of /g/, it usually disappears or fades into v or f or w, as it did in English. Polistra is tempted to postulate that the allophonic /ɣ/ lives and flourishes in more intimate cultures where people are close enough to hear delicate sounds, while it mutates or disappears in more distant cultures. Probably not a valid hypothesis, but a nice thought.It's nearly impossible to tell the difference between /ɣ/ and /v/ in rapid speech. Why would anyone WANT to say 'Ronald Raven' anyway? Commies have a dozen standard insulting variations for 'Reagan', but this ain't one of them. ¶ 12:55 AM
