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ArchivesRe: Lovelie pronunciation
in reply to a message by Anneza
Two comments about that--the spelling "loverly" indicates that the word is to be pronounced differently from the norm, and songwriters and poets too) will often tweak pronunciation to make words fit the meter. I haven't researched to see if "loverly" was actually a known pronunciation, but just because it appears in a song doesn't mean one can assume it to be.
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The point of the song, the musical and the GB Shaw play on which it was based is that the London (Cockney) dialect (like the Midlands, Yorkshire, Dorset etc, etc dialects) was socially unacceptable and for Eliza to be admitted to high society, her pronunciation had to change. It was and is very much a known pronunciation! In today's world, it isn't the barrier to success that it would have been a hundred years ago, but it's still there all right and has been for centuries.
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