My inland-Southern native dialect uses something like "pea-yun" (out of
context, it would be hard to distinguish from the inland Southern
present participle of a colloquial verb referring to urination).  I have
seen phonics texts for early elementary ed that use "pen" as the primary
example word for "short e" -- an example which won't be at all useful
for any Southerner. 

Bill Spruiell
Dept. of English
Central Michigan University

-----Original Message-----
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of DD Farms
Sent: Tuesday, August 18, 2009 7:02 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: fonetik

At 02:13 p.m. 18/08/2009, Edmond Wright wrote:
> > The trouble with 'fonetik' spelling is, of course, is indicated 
> by what Seth
>Katz says about the Southerner's 'peen' for 'pen', for the result 
>would be that
>everyone would write their own accent.

DD: All the Suthroners around me think a peen is part of a ball peen 
hammer, or the using of it. Pen is pronounced pen-uh. The 'e' is 
close to the sound of 'Eh?" The n is not unusual for all of us 
English speakers, but the suffix 'uh' is. I am not sure, but I think 
we add it to all words ending in a consonant. Just thought of that. 
We do tend to stick a lot of schwas in where they are just word 
extenders. It is sort of like we were getting paid by the syllables 
and not the words. 

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