A dialectological romance

[dr_whom]

So somehow it came up in conversation this evening that The Pronunciation of English in the Atlantic States ought to be a romance novel. So:

She's a young dialectology grad student in the 1930s, doing fieldwork for a new Linguistic Atlas project. He's a non-mobile rural male, one of her interview subjects, and from the moment she heard his pronunciation of the wordlist items "(look) here!" and "mushmelon" she knew she was in love. But her romance with him threatens to ruin her academic credibility when it's revealed that she, a caught-cot–merged speaker herself, incorrectly transcribes him as a merged speaker as well, as a result of mishearing his pronunciations of the relevant words. Because of all the sex. Can a doomed romance between opposite sides of the greatest phonological boundary in American English ever reach fulfillment? Yes, because of genre conventions, in the untold scandalous story behind The Pronunciation of English in the Atlantic States: "Her Rounded Vowels"!

...Okay, somebody write this please?

Comments

[jedusor.livejournal.com]

This was funny when I read it to myself and freaking hilarious when I read it aloud dramatically to projectyl.

[dr_whom]

Dramatic reading is the best reading!

[anasai.livejournal.com]

It's not for another year, but this sounds like a great http://www.yuletidetreasure.org/

[midnight-sidhe.livejournal.com]

Brilliant! I second!

[(Anonymous)]

I love this. So, so much. I wish I could write it. I can't. But I'll read it.
-Maya

[dr_whom]

Maya! How'd you find your way here?

Glad you like it! Now who will write it....

[midnight-sidhe.livejournal.com]

If this fell into a sub-genre I felt more at home with, I'd take a stab at it, but if I ever end up writing romances they'd take a different direction.