GoF Sphinx's riddle: Did Harry get it wrong?

[muscatel1988]

No: HPFGUIDX 130422

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Geoff Bannister" 
> And again,in the "demender" theory, mend doesn't fit the second line 
> of its couplet as an answer and, as someone has already remarked, I 
> can't think of any British local accent which would turn "ment" 
> into "mend" and I live in an area which does a lot of funny things 
> with its pronunciation!

And you're absolutely right, Geoff.  No British dialect does.

But the phonology of American English works differently.  The middle 
consonant of, for example, "rider" is pronounced the same there as the 
middle consonant of "writer".  Where BritEng has a voiced alveolar 
stop in the former and a voiceless stop in the latter, AmEng has a 
voiced alveolar flap in both.  

As for how "writer" and "rider" are distinguished in AmEng, given that 
the medial consonant doesn't do it, the difference lies in the vowel 
of the first syllable, which is longer in the first than the second.  

So it's unlikely that JKR, who doesn't have this stop > flap rule, 
would have meant "dementor", since she'd have "dementor" 
and "demendor" pronounced differently.

> JLV (whose pal Katie can't understand why Americans call her Kay-dee
> not Kay-Tee!)

That's why!