I was thinking the same thing, Xine! And I did have the mis-match issue for Blah – Law, and probably wouldn’t have really gotten it without that comment below it.
Agree with peterbburnett, I don’t know how to pronounce blah so it doesn’t rhyme with law. As far as I’ve ever known, they’re the same vowel sound. If they’re different, which one has the a of father?
@Anne, there certainly is a merger going on in some American speech communities, as you testify!
To answer your question, in the absence of this merger, it is “blah” that has the same sound as in “father”. The vowel in “law” is more rounded at the lips, like the one indicated by the “turned c” symbol in IPA; so / lɔ /.
The old alt.usage.english usenet group referred to it as the “cot/caught” merger. We don’t have that here, and I say “blah” and “law” with different vowels. That being said, I got the joke immediately.
They don’t, but since the spellings are so different, too, I would have had to read it out loud to get the pun. And even then I don’t know if I would have gotten it.
I just watched a recent episode of “NCIS: Sydney” — the team is part USA and part Australian, and when a person-of-interest was identified as Craig Somebody, they had a jolly moment of pretend-incomprehension and pronouncing that name differently for each other. They tried “Just like actor Daniel Craig” but of course that didn’t resolve anything. The subtitles were giving “Creg” and “Crayg”, which actually is pretty good.
I know Americans that would pronounce “Craig” either way. It wouldn’t be a point of confusion. If it were, in an official situation, you’d ask for spelling.
There’s some vowel shifting going on that I’ve noticed. Like this, long ‘a’ becoming short ‘e’.
Comics I Don't Understand 
Holy cow, I actually laughed at the squirrel’s comment. What has this world come to?
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I was thinking the same thing, Xine! And I did have the mis-match issue for Blah – Law, and probably wouldn’t have really gotten it without that comment below it.
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Never heard anyone pronounce BL:AH as BLAW
Never heard anyone pronounce LAW as LAH.
It was a CIDU for me.
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Out here in the wild west, we’ve cut down on the number of phonemes and pronounce “aw” and “ah” the same way.
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Agree with peterbburnett, I don’t know how to pronounce blah so it doesn’t rhyme with law. As far as I’ve ever known, they’re the same vowel sound. If they’re different, which one has the a of father?
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@Anne, there certainly is a merger going on in some American speech communities, as you testify!
To answer your question, in the absence of this merger, it is “blah” that has the same sound as in “father”. The vowel in “law” is more rounded at the lips, like the one indicated by the “turned c” symbol in IPA; so / lɔ /.
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The old alt.usage.english usenet group referred to it as the “cot/caught” merger. We don’t have that here, and I say “blah” and “law” with different vowels. That being said, I got the joke immediately.
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Anne (5): “blah” rhymes with “spa”or “bra” and “law” rhymes with “auger” or “slaw.”
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Puns don’t have to rhyme perfectly.
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They don’t, but since the spellings are so different, too, I would have had to read it out loud to get the pun. And even then I don’t know if I would have gotten it.
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I just watched a recent episode of “NCIS: Sydney” — the team is part USA and part Australian, and when a person-of-interest was identified as Craig Somebody, they had a jolly moment of pretend-incomprehension and pronouncing that name differently for each other. They tried “Just like actor Daniel Craig” but of course that didn’t resolve anything. The subtitles were giving “Creg” and “Crayg”, which actually is pretty good.
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I know Americans that would pronounce “Craig” either way. It wouldn’t be a point of confusion. If it were, in an official situation, you’d ask for spelling.
There’s some vowel shifting going on that I’ve noticed. Like this, long ‘a’ becoming short ‘e’.
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Mitch4 (11): Yeah, that was a funny little scene.
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