"But it is, of course, complete baloney, hooey, nonsense, and ... from "hanbag", but I'm by no means sure of that."
"He made no claim about your speech, he just said that if your are sounding the "d", it is a spelling pronunciation. I don't know why you refer to that as "mere" as the could just imply literacy."
What I left above of the original message is a clear claim about the speech of native speakers.
"You have not addressed my several points about our own speech not necessarily being evidence of general use or trends, ... ways in which you know your own speech better than others know theirs. I don't know what they are, however.)"
I take that point. I will instead apply my comment to the speech of other native speakers I know.
"if you acknowledge that is probably sometimes indistinguishable from "hanbag" then consider the microscopic change that is necessary to go ... be an "m." It is such a small difference that it seems entirely likely that many people do just that."
"Peter's post was over-hasty."
"It may have been, but "baloney", etc. does (presumably "not") make a case that it was."
No, but it, or they, was, or were, accompanied by an example. As it happens, the shift to "m" from "n" or "nd" is a language feature to which I'm sensitive, at least partly because I remember the derision heaped on a schoolmate when he said "samwich", and because I've known it to actually cause misunderstanding.
"I might disagree with his inference that no one says the "d" in "handsome", but his description of how it probably often happens is a good one as far as I can tell."
Well, yes; but it's taking it too far to suggest everybody does it. Perhaps I reacted too strongly, as one sometimes does on Usenet.
"(Is " 'baloney' , etc. " a compound subject requiring "do" and not "does".)"
An interesting question. Sometimes that "et" is strictly an "and", and sometimes in effect an "or". But you could argue that it depends on the placing of the quotation marks. Thinking about it is beginning to confuse me. In short, I don't know; but I prefer singular here, taking the subject of the verb to be the quotation, not the items listed or implied in it.
Mike.