zompist bboard

One thing I have seen is there is variation in English between H/æ/lloween and H/ɑ/lloween, and this variation, at least from personal experience, does not seem to necessarily pattern with particular dialects. For instance, my father has H/æ/lloween while I have H/ɑ/lloween, despite having grown up in the same suburb as myself. The orthography at least implies that H/æ/lloween is the more conservative form, and I tend to notice middle aged and older people are more likely to have this form than younger people. Does anyone have any idea of what is driving this variation, since at least in NAE æ > ɑ (or in the context of my dialect, ɛ > a) is not a regular sound change?

I think it is a regularisation according to this rule from the English spelling rules:

zompist wrote:18. al is pronounced òl before r, s, m, a dental stop, or final ll: also, already, wall, bald, although, almost.

Link

mèþru wrote:I think it is a regularisation according to this rule from the English spelling rules:

zompist wrote:18. al is pronounced òl before r, s, m, a dental stop, or final ll: also, already, wall, bald, although, almost.

Link

Except in the dialect here those words have /ɔ/ not /ɑ/. And this does not occur in S/æ/lly, sh/æ/llow, f/æ/llow, s/æ/llow, c/æ/llow, or O'M/æ/lley (there are probably others I cannot remember right now), and then there's a different sound change in marshm/ɛ/llow.

I have /ɑ/, making hallow and hollow homophones for me.

This is probably a useless contribution but you triggered a memory of elementary school where we re-enacted the Salem witch trials (I used to live in Salem, Massachusetts) and a "witch" was burned at the stake because she was asked to recite the Lord's Prayer and said "hallowed" with /æ/ instead of /a/. (sic, not /ɑ/)

I know that in that part of Massachusetts, there are people who have the bath/trap split, and it's universally assumed that words with /a/ are somehow more dignified because they sound British. I never really thought about it before, but I think I still have that mental association, such that if someone from near here said Halloween with /ɑ/ and I noticed it I would assume they were deliberately being pretentious. Yet, saying it to myself just now, it doesn't seem "wrong", so I've probably been hearing both pronunciations for quite awhile and simply not noticed.

Considering the original is Scots, the more conservative pronounciation would be /ɑ/, the whole word being /hɑlɑ′i:n/, /hɑl′i:n/ or /hɑle′i:n/ : http://dsl.ac.uk/entry/snd/hallow_n2

jmcd wrote:Considering the original is Scots, the more conservative pronounciation would be /ɑ/, the whole word being /hɑlɑ′i:n/, /hɑl′i:n/ or /hɑle′i:n/ : http://dsl.ac.uk/entry/snd/hallow_n2

Uh...hallow is a native English word; the Scots word is cognate. Halloween is just a contraction of hallow evening, i.e., "holy night."

More properly, "All Hallows' Evening", as November 1st is "All Hallows' Day", though because "hallow" has changed enough in meaning amongst the general populace, we now refer to November 1st as "All Saints' Day" much of the time. As for why we kept "Hallow' e'en", that's a different story.

I think there are a couple of things going on with "hɑllow."

First, as mèþru said, it's a common pattern in English that <all> = THOUGHT followed by /l/, which for people with the cot-caught merger is /ɑl/. Apparently this doesn't apply for you, but a lot of American English speakers fall into this category.

As you said, this pronunciation is actually NOT regular before vowels (that's normally /æl/). But there are enough exceptions due to suffixation (caller, calling), w-rounding (wallow, swallow) and miscellaneous other oddities that this pattern may not be very obvious to most people.

The fact that "hollow" already exists may make it easier to use that pronunciation, since it is familiar.

In addition, for me at least, the relationship between "hallow" and "holy" is fairly salient. The meanings are similar enough, and the h_l pattern is distinctive enough, that I felt that these were related without needing to look up the etymology. "Holy" is much more common and I definitely learned it earlier, and it has an "o." It's true this is pronounced /oʊ/, but alternation between /oʊ/ and LOT is fairly common in English; there's even an example with the morpheme "holy" (holiday). Alternations between GOAT and TRAP are much less common; the only other example that I can think of is "ghost"~"ghastly."

Zaarin wrote:

jmcd wrote:Considering the original is Scots, the more conservative pronounciation would be /ɑ/, the whole word being /hɑlɑ′i:n/, /hɑl′i:n/ or /hɑle′i:n/ : http://dsl.ac.uk/entry/snd/hallow_n2

Uh...hallow is a native English word; the Scots word is cognate. Halloween is just a contraction of hallow evening, i.e., "holy night."

Almost. It's a compound word of 'hallow' and 'e'en' (in Older Scots, 'evin'/'ewin'), the Scots word never having had the -ing ending on this particular word.

Just like 'till' is not a contraction of 'until' but rather the original form of 'until' without the prefix.

mèþru wrote:I think it is a regularisation according to this rule from the English spelling rules:

zompist wrote:18. al is pronounced òl before r, s, m, a dental stop, or final ll: also, already, wall, bald, although, almost.

Link

Though it's my rule, in my speech it doesn't apply to Halloween! For me the word has /a/, just like hollow (and I don't have the cot/caught merger; this is definitely not an /ɔ/ word). I wouldn't call this /ɑ/ since I'm told that my /ɔ/ is [ɑ].

But hallowed (or All Hallows) has /æ/.

I have /æ/. I think those who are saying it's a regularization are right. There may also be some influence from the fact that several common General American English words end in (very rough diaphonemic transcription) /ɑlo/ and hallow is an uncommon word in Modern English outside of specific religious contexts.

I have /æ/. I have never heard /ɑ/.

Zaarin wrote:making hallow and hollow homophones for me.

It had never occurred to me that they even could be homophones. My hallow, and the hallow of the entire world of my life experience, has /æ/.

You people might as well be telling me you have /œ̃˧˦˧/ as your <a> in Halloween.

mind

blown

Natively I have /ɑ/, but I've heard /æ/ so much from the media that it doesn't sound off to me and I know I must've used it myself before. (In fact, it took some time thinking it over before I was sure about my native form.)

Weirdly, I have /ɑ/ for hallow but only in the Lord's Prayer[*]. I didn't even realise this until after Mark posted the form hallowed. I kept hearing /æ/ in my head every time I said hallow or Allhallows', but when I recited the Lord's Prayer, I autodefaulted to /ɑ/.


[*] Or--to use my native term--"the 'Our Father'". "Lord's Prayer" sounds so very Protestant to me.[/size]

cromulant wrote:I have /æ/. I have never heard /ɑ/.

Zaarin wrote:making hallow and hollow homophones for me.

It had never occurred to me that they even could be homophones. My hallow, and the hallow of the entire world of my life experience, has /æ/.

You people might as well be telling me you have /œ̃˧˦˧/ as your <a> in Halloween.

mind

blown

I'm actually surprised by this. I've heard /æ/ and /ɑ/ almost equally so that neither pronunciation seems at all foreign to me.

linguoboy wrote:Natively I have /ɑ/, but I've heard /æ/ so much from the media that it doesn't sound off to me and I know I must've used it myself before. (In fact, it took some time thinking it over before I was sure about my native form.)

Weirdly, I have /ɑ/ for hallow but only in the Lord's Prayer[*]. I didn't even realise this until after Mark posted the form hallowed. I kept hearing /æ/ in my head every time I said hallow or Allhallows', but when I recited the Lord's Prayer, I autodefaulted to /ɑ/.


[*] Or--to use my native term--"the 'Our Father'". "Lord's Prayer" sounds so very Protestant to me.[/size]

...This actually made me realize that the Lord's Prayer is the one place I pronounced hallowed with /æ/...(I am Protestant, so this may be a Protestant/Catholic split? On the other hand, I've heard plenty of Protestants use /ɑ/.)

cromulant wrote:I have /æ/. I have never heard /ɑ/.

Same.

I say /æ/, I assume because I pronounce "hallow" with an /æ/.

I'm honestly not even sure I have one more common than the other, both sound equally correct. My default *might* be with a front vowel, but I think they're just in free variation.

Also, interestingly enough, I believe I have [hɒləʊ(w)ɨd] in The Lord's Prayer, with three syllables and a back vowel, but /hæləʊd/ normally.