Cockermouth

Cockermouth in Cumberland has been in the news recently because of disastrous flooding. Here’s Rod Liddle in yesterday’s Sunday Times:

An extra irritation for the poor people of Cockermouth, as if they needed such a thing, is the determination of television reporters to mispronounce the name of the flood-stricken town. They seem unwilling to articulate the first syllable, so that it comes out as “Currmouth” or, in the case of very posh reporters from the BBC, “C’mouth”. It must annoy the locals because it enrages me: I scream the first syllable at the TV every time it is mispronounced. Let’s hope the Sheffield suburb of Penistone stays dry this winter.

I must say I haven’t noticed anything particular about television reporters’ pronunciation of the first syllable of Cockermouth. I haven’t heard anyone reducing ˈkɒkə to just kə as Rod Liddle implies. (Though I suppose a few people might get as embarrassed about this name as American tourists in London sometimes do about Piccadilly Line tube trains showing the destination Cockfosters. Roostermouth, anyone?)
It was the final syllable that I found interesting, the -mouth part. Harry Campbell noticed, too.

It's always pronounced with the last syllable unobscured as in the mouth on your face, rather than -məθ. I had the idea from somewhere that only in Scotland was this the pattern, as in Eyemouth. Compare Burnmouth (in the Scottish Borders), pronounced burn-mouth, with Bournmouth (-məθ).

Although outsiders may say -maʊθ, I think the locals mostly say -məθ in Cockermouth, as you would expect for a place in England. Listen to a resident, Sue Cashmore, and a Scottish reporter, Laura Bicker; also the Chief Constable of Cumbria. They all say -məθ.
When I was a boy my father twice took a locum near Maryport on the Solway coast. We would have outings to the Lake District, taking a bus to Keswick (ˈkezɪk) that passed through Cockermouth. Being outsiders, we called it -maʊθ.

heav’nly scansion

OK, it’s a bit early yet for Christmas (though I’m singing in a Christmas show in just one week’s time). Sorry.
I was thinking about the carol Joy to the World — not one commonly sung in Britain when I was young, but now very familiar. The first verse ends with the repeated phrase and heaven and nature sing. Or actually, in the score I have, it’s and heav’n and nature sing (with an apostrophe) the first few times but then and heaven and nature sing (no apostrophe) the last two times. The slur marks on the score, however, indicate that heav’n (or heaven) is to be sung as a single syllable no matter how spelt.
This got me thinking about compression (varisyllabicity) and the constraints on it.
In modern English the word heaven, like seven, given, even, when spoken in isolation and in ordinary slow formal or colloquial style, must have two syllables. Phonemically heaven is /ˈhevən/, with the /ən/ sequence optionally being realized as a syllabic [n]. The cluster /vn/, with ordinary non-syllabic n, is not a permitted final cluster, and if there is no [ə] present then the [n] must be syllabic. (This is not the usage of eighteenth-century hymnodists, for whom “heav’n” could be, and usually was, scanned as one syllable in all contexts.)
However, like other syllabic consonants, this [n̩] is subject to possible loss of syllabicity when followed by a weak vowel. Compare seven and a half pronounced as four syllables only, ˈsevnənəˈhɑːf, or indeed heaven and earth as three, ˈhevnənˈɜːθ.
In heaven and nature sing the /ən/ of heaven is followed each time by the weak /ə/ of and. So the conditions for compression are satisfied, the word can be pronounced as a single syllable, and the notation in the score is justified.
In the recording made by Boney M, interestingly enough, we hear clearly disyllabic ˈhevən each time my score has heav’n, but compressed monosyllabic hevn for the last repetition, where my score says heaven.
Mariah Carey, on the other hand, sings disyllabic ˈhevən everywhere. This may be because she’s American, and the Americans don’t seem to do nearly as much compression as the British. (Compare typical AmE ˈfedərəl federal with typical BrE ˈfedrəl.)

schedule

Donald Marsh wrote

I've been trying to find the origin for the difference in the pronunciation of the word 'schedule' (sked- and shed-) and thought you might be able to help. If you could give me a brief, layman's explanation as to why British English pronounces the word "shed-ule" and American English pronounces it "sked-ule" I would be deeply grateful. Which pronunciation is older, and how did the newer pronunciation become acceptable and take hold?

The basic answer is surely that we don’t know. As with most differences in pronunciation, we really cannot tell why one form has become prevalent in one geographical area and another in another.
I replied

It's often difficult or impossible to say WHY a particular pronunciation exists — ultimately it's a matter of fashion, like clothes.
For 'schedule', one mystery is that this word used to be pronounced with plain s-. That's the only form given by Walker (1791). (See the OED.) But it is never heard today.

The earliest spelling for this word given in the OED is cedule, from Old French and attested from the 14th to the 16th century, when the modern spelling first makes its appearance. (The OED continues, “mod.F. cédule”, though I can find no such word in my big Collins/Robert dictionary of French.) The pronunciation with /s-/ appears to have persisted unchanged. In BrE, the orthoepist Smart (1836) is the first to recommend the pronunciation with /ʃ-/. I don’t know what early Americans did.
So the question comes down to why /ˈsedjuːl/, the pronunciation used until the end of the 18th century, ultimately gave way to /ˈʃedjuːl/ in BrE but to /ˈskedʒ(u)əl/ in AmE.
Actually, as readers of LPD will know, the picture is actually more complicated than that. By no means all speakers of BrE prefer /ʃed-/. In my sample, in fact, 65% of BrE respondents born in 1974 or later preferred the /sked-/ form, which seems set to gradually displace /ʃed-/. This may have something to do with the fact that in AmE the word has a wider meaning than traditionally in BrE, since it covers BrE (railway, airline, bus) timetable as well as the meaning we share of a “tabular or classified statement” or “blank form”. Now we are borrowing this additional AmE timetable meaning (e.g. departing on schedule, scheduled arrival time), often along with its pronunciation.
I suppose that part of the answer to Mr Marsh’s question is that both /sk-/ and /ʃ-/ are spelling pronunciations. The model for the first would be in words such as school, scheme, schooner, Schofield; for the second, schnapps, schnozzle, meerschaum, and German names such as Schiller, Schubert, Schweppes, Porsche. Since the first group may be felt as more “native”, it is not surprising if it attracts items from the second. The same thing has happened with schism, traditionally /ˈsɪzəm/ but now usually /ˈskɪzəm/.
As for scheme, /k/ is the usual reflex of Greek chi, which is what σχῆμα schēma had.

constraints on diacritics

Pablo Ugerman, a graphic designer, is developing a phonetic font for a degree project. He wrote to me enquiring about phonetic letters and diacritics. What constraints are there on the combination of particular base characters with particular diacritics?
As far as I know, no one has ever really addressed this question. I replied

In using the International Phonetic Alphabet, the only constraints on combinations of diacritics and base characters are logical ones. For example, the “voiceless” diacritic U+0325 COMBINING RING BELOW can logically only be applied to a base character that stands for a voiced sound, e.g. [m, b, ɓ, u], but not [t, θ, ç, ʘ]. It has a variant, U+030A COMBINING RING ABOVE, used if the base character has a descender, e.g. [ŋ, ɻ, ɡ]. Similarly, the dental diacritic U+032A COMBINING BRIDGE BELOW would usually only be applied to a base character standing for an alveolar sound, e.g. [t, n, s]. However if someone wanted to use it with, say, [b] to show a labiodental stop, that would also be OK. But combined with, say, [k] it would presumably be meaningless.
There is no formal constraint on having multiple diacritics on the same base character.

The aspiration diacritic, [ʰ], is most commonly deployed after symbols for voiceless plosives. The IPA Handbook also shows it with [d], although the article about Hindi in the body of the book instead uses [ʱ] for the voiced aspirated series, thus [bʱ d̪ʱ dʒʱ ɖʱ ɡʱ]. Korean has two kinds of alveolar fricative, one of them often transcribed [sʰ], and I suppose in principle any affricate or fricative can be aspirated. Can approximants? Can vowels? You could call the preaspiration of Icelandic, Scottish Gaelic etc aspiration of the preceding vowel, and certainly transcriptions of the type [kʰaʰt] are in use for such cases.
“Breathy voiced” and “creaky voiced” can only combine with symbols for voiced sounds: [t̤] is presumably a logical contradiction. Nasals can’t be nasalized. And so on.
Are “advanced” and “retracted” only for vowels? No, because they are sometimes used to show dental as against alveolar, prevelar as against velar consonants. What about “centralized”? Vowels only, I think. Is “syllabic” only for consonants? Normally yes, and then only for nasals and liquids. Some students imagine that looked should be transcribed lʊkd̩ (with “syllabic d”), but they are confusing phonetics with morphology. Syllabic plosives are a no-no.
What about combining the syllabicity mark with a vowel symbol? Normally we don’t do that, because vowels are inherently syllabic, so it would be tautologous. But Abercrombie, in his English Phonetic Texts (1964), used a transcription for English in which the syllabicity mark sometimes appeared under schwa to show that it was not part of a diphthong.

unreleased

Václav Jonáš Podlipský wrote to ask about

the 'unreleased' IPA diacritic. Is it supposed to mark 'no ORAL release' or 'no release at all'? I'm asking because I don't know if it is correct to use the symbol in phrases like 'look at me' [lʊk əp mi] where the bilabial (underlyingly alveolar) stop is followed by a (now homorganic) nasal and where there is no labial release but only a nasal one. What about 'at noon'?

For a plosive to have literally no release at all, the speaker would have to stop breathing, or at least discontinue the airstream mechanism underlying the production of the plosive.
In the middle (compression) stage of a plosive, air pressure builds up in the cavity behind the primary articulators. Something has to undo that pressure buildup: if not the release of the primary articulators, then either some other release (notably nasal, by lowering the soft palate) or a zeroing of the pressure (if the intercostal muscles and diaphragm creating the egressive airstream stop compressing the lungs).
That is why the diacritic [ ̚ ] is defined on the IPA chart not as “unreleased” but as “no audible release”.
The excellent Wikipedia article entitled Unreleased stop correctly says that

An unreleased stop or unreleased plosive is a plosive consonant without an audible release burst.

Why would a plosive have a release that was not audible? Usually because a new primary place of articulation takes over the task of retaining the compressed air: most typically the glottal place. When we say right at the end of an utterance we often bring in a glottal closure to reinforce an alveolar closure. When the tongue tip then ultimately separates from the alveolar ridge there is no audible “burst” (noise of release), because the air pressure is held behind the glottal closure. Then later we either produce a glottal release or, more usually, just stop pushing with the lungs. The result can correctly be transcribed [t̚ ]. (It is also possible, of course, to release the [t] normally, or to entirely replace it by a glottal articulation, [ʔ].)
In phrases such as the look at me and at noon that Václav [ˈvaːtslaf] asks about it is possible to use nasal release, i.e. to release the [p] or [t] by lowering the soft palate. In that case there will be an audible release. Daniel Jones called this “nasal plosion”, and judging by his description it appears to have been the norm in the RP of a hundred years ago. The IPA symbol is [pⁿ, tⁿ].
Nowadays nasal release in this phonetic environment would tend to sound a bit prissy or over-careful: in Britain we mostly either just use a glottal stop, [lʊkəʔmi, əʔnuːn], or else we render the nasal release inaudible by covering it with a glottal closure.
What do I mean by “inaudible nasal release”? This can be notated [lʊkəpʔmi, ətʔnuːn], or if you prefer [lʊkəp̚ mi, ət̚ nuːn]. Instructions for making [pʔm] (which could also be written [p̚ m]) would be:
1. As you finish making the vowel, switch off voicing and bring the lips firmly together, thereby cutting off the air escape and thus creating the first stage of the plosive (the “approach”). The air builds up in the pharynx and mouth behind the lips.
2. While the lips remain together, close the glottis. This cuts off the air pressure from the lungs, isolating the supraglottal cavities so that there is no longer much pressure differential between the oropharynx plus mouth on the one hand and the nasopharynx and outside air on the other. Air pressure remains in the subglottal tract. This is the middle stage of the plosive (the “hold” or compression stage).
3. Lower the soft palate. We don’t hear any nasal release because there is no great pressure differential involved. The oropharynx and the nasopharynx now communicate.
4. Release the glottal closure. This is the third stage of the plosive, the “release” — but it is inaudible as such. The lips are still together. As the vocal folds (= glottis) cease to be firmly closed they start to vibrate, giving voicing. Air escapes through the nose. We have [m].
You could abbreviate all this description by just referring to it as “[p] with no audible release”.
A further possibility that might be called “no audible release” is the kind of thing we get in grab bag, bad dog, big girl, where articulatorily there is just a single plosive with a long hold: narrowly [ɡræbːæɡ, bædːɒɡ, bɪɡːɜːl]. Phonologically, of course, there are two plosives involved each time, /bb, dd, ɡɡ/. The /d/ at the end of bad is literally unreleased, just as the initial /d/ in dog is “unapproached”. There is just one plosive approach, as [æ] ends, and one plosive release, as [ɒ] begins. The extra duration of the hold phase, as the primary articulators remain in position and air builds up, signals to us that this counts as two successive consonants, not one.

iron or...

In Saturday’s Guardian Simon Hoggart commented, not for the first time, on Gordon Brown’s “strange pronunciations”.

The prime minister has been making much of the Conservative party leader David Cameron's "cast-iron" promise, now abandoned, of a referendum on the Lisbon treaty.…
It's rather spoiled, though, by the fact that he seems to be the only person in the English-speaking world who pronounces the letter "r" in "iron", thus: "cast eye-ron promise." It brings you up short and makes it hard to concentrate on what follows.

Gordon Brown is of course far from being ‘the only person in the English-speaking world who pronounces the letter “r” in “iron”’. All rhotic speakers do.
What is unusual about Brown’s pronunciation, as Simon Hoggart says, is that he pronounces the word as spelt, i-ron ˈaɪ rən. So for him it rhymes with Byron and involves the same sequence as tyrant. The usual pronunciation of iron, ˈaɪə(r)n, must result from a historical metathesis by which ī rən becomes ī ərn. The r then as usual coalesces with the preceding schwa in rhotic accents to yield ɚ, ˈaɪɚn, while in non-rhotic accents, being preconsonantal, it undergoes the usual deletion, giving ˈaɪən.
The OED gives a rather more elaborate account, involving “diphthongation” (by which I think it means the Great Vowel Shift) and “syncopation”, but saying essentially the same thing.I don’t know whether Brown’s pronunciation of this word is shared by some or all Scots. Perhaps someone will tell us. It does have the advantage of making the word clearly distinct from ion.

fɜːrɜːd gɜːlz

Yesterday I paid a quick visit to the University of Liverpool to chair a fascinating lecture by Wim Jansen of the University of Amsterdam, who has carried out a corpus-based comparison of the Esperanto of 1903 with that of 2003. He showed that over the intervening century some Esperanto affixes have acquired a life of their own: for example ege, from the augmentative suffix -eg-, was unknown a hundred years ago but is now a significant rival to tre (very) and multe (much).
Anyhow, on my way through the town, as I walked back to the station, I was intrigued to see a hairdresser’s punningly called Ben Hair. It took me back.
(Explanation: in Scouse, the local accent of Liverpool, the SQUARE and NURSE vowels are merged. Think chariot races.)
We had the same merger where I grew up, although our local accent was Lancashire rather than Scouse. When I was at primary school there was a girl in the class called ˈmɜːrɪ. I would clutch 5d ˈfaɪfpəns in my hand every day to pay my ˈbʊs fɜː. (That would have been a ˈθrepni ˈbɪt and two pennies, or I’d have got a penny change from a tanner. Question for the young: how much change would I have got from half a crown?)
Those who remember Cilla Black (a Scouser) from the television programme Blind Date will recall that she was forever introducing girls called klɜː or ˈsɜːrə.
My picture shows Abercromby Squɜː with part of the University and one of Liverpool’s two cathedrals.

In our Liverpool home,
In our Liverpool home,
We speak with an accent exceedingly rɜː,
We meet under a statue exceedingly bɜː,
If you want a cathedral we've got one to spɜː,
In our Liverpool home.