2000/1/30
Fascinating look at the speech traits and nonverbal cues of sci-fi fans, from a talk by speech therapist Karyn Ashburn. (rec.arts.sf.fandom)
Second, fans articulate more than mundanes. When I said the phrase "talk to", she pointed out that I had pronounced the "k" on the end of "talk". Mundanes, she said, wouldn't. ... [fans] are more likely than mundanes to pronounce the "h" in "where", and the "l" in "folk". (She seemed to think it was rather charming; that we were preserving old pronounciations, or reinventing them from the way words are spelled.)
She did suggest that many of the common features of fanspeak seem to be related to thinking in "written English".I suspect that similar observations would apply to a lot of other groups who deal with textual modes of communication over verbal/physical ones. --acb