'Ant' or 'Ahnt'? Capitalizing Cocktail Names. Archie Bunker.
Grammar Girl Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing
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The Trap Bath Split
Linguists refer to this pronunciation change as the trap bath split. It's likely that certain consonants caused people to say the vowels differently when those consonants were around. By the late eighteenth century, this bath split had spread to most of london's upper crust. So why does it not seem to have followed the british to america? Well, since many of the early settlers had left for the colonies well before the split really took hold, they brought only the original a pronunciation along for the ride. As a result, the founding dialects in the new world retained only the a vowel sound,. rather than the new a sound that became popular across the pond a little
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