The recurring discussion here of whether people who do things different are breaking rules or using different rules reminded me of a paper I heard recently, about "u-fronting", the way young folks and southerners and Californians pronounce words like "dude" with their tongue raised farther forward in the mouth, so that sometimes people write it "dewd" to show the pronunciation they mean. The rules for it are actually quite cool, so I thought my fellow word nerds would enjoy it:
1. Pronounce all words where old Northerners say "oo" (rude, moon, toot) as "ew" (rewd, mewn, tewt)...
2. ...unless they're followed by an L (i.e., pool, tool, fool, don't become pewl, tewl, fewl)...
3. ...unless that word with a following L is "cool" (i.e., cool does become kewl)...
4. ...unless that "cool" actually means the temperature (i.e., temperature cool doesn't become kewl).
Language is fun!