Apr. 9th, 2011 11:52 am
Penning it down
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muckefuckI think I may have mentioned before that when it comes to my native dialect, I'm pin-pen merged. This is actually a bit unusual, because the line runs just south of St Louis, where I was raised, and well south of the Baltimore area, where I was born and spent my early years. Even more unusually, I believe I'm the only one in my family who does this.
I can remember only one time in my entire life when the homophony has caused any confusion. I was seven or eight and for some reason my parents had sent me and my older brother to Sunday mass on our own. I left the house with a little sewing pin; I seem to recall it had a pink head. In any case, I was fiddling with it while I was kneeling and dropped it. After the service was over, I told my brother, "I dropped my pin" and he heard "I dropped my pen." He went to tell the priest, and while he was doing that, I looked around and found it--much to his exasperation when he came back.
So I've never felt a need for the compounds "ink pen" and "straight pin" that many pin-pen merged speakers use. I mentioned this in a discussion the other day and found that for at least some speakers, the term is "stick pin" rather than "straight pin". I don't think I've heard this before. Two friends of mine--one from Dayton, another from Shreveport--told me they contrast "straight pins" (which have a simple flat head) with "stick pins" (which have fancier heads). My little sewing pin would be a "stick pin" to them, as would a common hatpin.
Incidentally, I can hear and make the distinction if I need to, probably as a consequence of my foreign language study. It wouldn't do to confuse rinnen and rennen after all, and I distinctly remember being upbraided by a German professor for my mispronunciation of Englisch. (Though this is, of course, an instance where it's not just the pin-pen merged who have a near-close vowel here.) But naturally this is no reason to eliminate a charming quirk of my English.
I can remember only one time in my entire life when the homophony has caused any confusion. I was seven or eight and for some reason my parents had sent me and my older brother to Sunday mass on our own. I left the house with a little sewing pin; I seem to recall it had a pink head. In any case, I was fiddling with it while I was kneeling and dropped it. After the service was over, I told my brother, "I dropped my pin" and he heard "I dropped my pen." He went to tell the priest, and while he was doing that, I looked around and found it--much to his exasperation when he came back.
So I've never felt a need for the compounds "ink pen" and "straight pin" that many pin-pen merged speakers use. I mentioned this in a discussion the other day and found that for at least some speakers, the term is "stick pin" rather than "straight pin". I don't think I've heard this before. Two friends of mine--one from Dayton, another from Shreveport--told me they contrast "straight pins" (which have a simple flat head) with "stick pins" (which have fancier heads). My little sewing pin would be a "stick pin" to them, as would a common hatpin.
Incidentally, I can hear and make the distinction if I need to, probably as a consequence of my foreign language study. It wouldn't do to confuse rinnen and rennen after all, and I distinctly remember being upbraided by a German professor for my mispronunciation of Englisch. (Though this is, of course, an instance where it's not just the pin-pen merged who have a near-close vowel here.) But naturally this is no reason to eliminate a charming quirk of my English.
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"Stick pin" vs. "ink pen". Unfortunately, I bought a big bag of ink pens labeled "stick pens" which confuses the issue mightily!