tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-377103124456226005.post1220996255657787682..comments2024-03-17T09:14:13.950+00:00Comments on John Wells’s phonetic blog: I don't believe it!John Wellshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13684304410735867148noreply@blogger.comBlogger71125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-377103124456226005.post-57314591621163444192012-11-14T01:12:02.731+00:002012-11-14T01:12:02.731+00:00I totally agree that "NATO" with [t] sou...I totally agree that "NATO" with [t] sounds so pretentious! I don't understand why radio people feel the need to do that.Bradhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07464425532023558776noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-377103124456226005.post-66305457103538547522012-05-18T00:45:17.738+01:002012-05-18T00:45:17.738+01:00Tom S, that's a great point about the Californ...Tom S, that's a great point about the California Vowel Shift from /æ/ towards /a/. At the very least those in California not as progressive as /a/ are not raising or diphthongizing it (except for, of course, pre-nasally). <br /><br />This raises another, perhaps unintentional point of the original post...that those outside an accent group/area may pick up on a feature confined to a specific phonological environment and overgeneralize its placement. A Briton hearing [mẽən] for 'man' may overgeneralize and assume all instances of /æ/ diphthongize thusly, when it's really a specific conditioned environment (pre-nasal) for most Americans that doesn't apply to words like 'bad' (except for in specific regions hardly representative of the majority of Americans). <br /><br />Similarly, an American hearing a glottal stop in a Londoner's 'butter' might overgeneralize and assume all instances of /t/ become [ʔ] in British English when that's quite far from the case. <br /><br />I've actually heard a few Britons try to replicate a "typical American" accent with pronunciations like [fẽəst] for 'fast', which sounds to my ears about as representative of "typical" American speech as an American imitating a "typical" British accent with the [ɒɪv gɒʔ ə bɪʔ əv ˈbɪʔə ˈbɐʔə wɪv mɪi ˈɪnːɪʔ] type of "imitations."<br /><br />:DSpraeccraefthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05242267457757047983noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-377103124456226005.post-76027833163230674932012-05-17T10:48:06.297+01:002012-05-17T10:48:06.297+01:00AJD is spot-on...[ẽə] in 'bad' is highly r...AJD is spot-on...[ẽə] in 'bad' is highly regional in the US. It sounds like something from the East Coast or Northern Cities. <br /><br />As a Californian, I'm used to /æ/ diphthongizing pre-nasally but [bẽəd] for 'bad' sounds like something someone might say 2,000 or 3,000 miles from here (and I'm not exactly even sure where, exactly). <br /><br />In a place like California, not only has /æ/ not diphthongized, it's been lowering towards /a/, as noted by those studying the <br />California Vowel Shift (the exception being pre-nasally). Thus, my realizations are more or less as follows: <br /><br />[hæ̃ənd] 'hand'<br />[hæ̃əm] 'ham'<br />[he(ɪ)ŋ] 'hang'<br />[he(ɪ)ŋk] 'Hank'<br />[haːd] or [hæ̞ːd] (lowered [æ]) 'had'<br /><br />In this context [bẽəd] 'bad' sounds quite "other" indeed! I can thus very easily see how an American (depending on where they're from) might legitimately claim to not have come across [bẽəd] 'bad'. (Though surely at least in a movie sometime?)Spraeccraefthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05242267457757047983noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-377103124456226005.post-39043602405116630392012-03-23T01:38:11.460+00:002012-03-23T01:38:11.460+00:00Karen,
About "romannic", perhaps listen...Karen,<br /><br />About "romannic", perhaps listening to 'No Surrender' by Bruce Springsteen (around the 2:50 mark) will change your mind:<br />http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MD3DdskaPhs<br /><br />"I want to sleep beneath<br />Peaceful skies as in my lover's bed<br />With a wide open country in my eyes<br />And these romantic dreams in my head"<br /><br />Here are some words where I think the flap t is dropped more often than not: dentist, hunter, incidental.<br /><br />For an EFL-oriented summary of the flap t phenomenon, see http://www.antimoon.com/how/flap-t.htm<br /><br />TomaszTomasz P. Szynalskihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16570900480571331594noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-377103124456226005.post-65928039699687109552012-03-21T04:04:20.813+00:002012-03-21T04:04:20.813+00:00I take it back. Partly, anyway. Today I discovered...I take it back. Partly, anyway. Today I discovered that my 81-year-old mother pronounces "reinventing" as "reinvenning." So I guess I just haven't been paying attention. :)Karen van Hoekhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09004215390305691685noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-377103124456226005.post-46791811181113059392012-03-19T08:44:26.970+00:002012-03-19T08:44:26.970+00:00It seems to me, that the T dropping is more common...It seems to me, that the T dropping is more common among the less educated, or when one is speaking informally. If done in the presence of a teacher, one would be instructed to enunciate.Dilsnikhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14963518186504018840noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-377103124456226005.post-80434086412579222312012-03-17T22:36:20.560+00:002012-03-17T22:36:20.560+00:00p.s. I've found a Youtube video of someone tea...p.s. I've found a Youtube video of someone teaching t-dropping after /n/ as standard American English, so now I know how it sounds. Some of the examples sounded very non-standard to me -- like something you might hear from a high school dropout, most likely in a sentence beginning with "Hey, dude..." ("romannic" for "romantic" particularly made me cringe). I wonder whether I'm unusual in having that reaction. Perhaps t-dropping in these contexts is more prevalent in some regions or among younger speakers.Karen van Hoekhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09004215390305691685noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-377103124456226005.post-87085962938040387442012-03-16T00:04:19.880+00:002012-03-16T00:04:19.880+00:00To me, my own flap-T and flap-D sound quite differ...To me, my own flap-T and flap-D sound quite different from each other -- there's a breathy quality on the flap-T that's absent in the flap-D. When I've checked it using PRAAT software, the difference between my flap-T and flap-D is quite obviously visible, so much so that I've wondered why there's even any controversy as to whether some Americans distinguish the two -- surely I'm not the only one. However, I don't know whether the difference is audible to anyone else, or whether listeners rely on context to disambiguate. I'll have to see whether any other Americans can tell which one I'm saying. <br /><br />I keep wishing I could hear some examples of Americans pronouncing "winter" as "winner" or similar such words. The only one I'm familiar with from my own pronunciation is "twunny" to mean "twenty." I wouldn't deny that there must be *some* Americans *somewhere* who are dropping t's in the -nt- environment all the time, but it doesn't feel normal or natural to me, and so I wonder where these people are and whether I'm just not noticing. Some ESL accent reduction books present these pronunciations as the norm, and I have a hard time buying it. <br /><br />The pronunciation of "bad" you're describing does, however, seem to be quite widespread.Karen van Hoekhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09004215390305691685noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-377103124456226005.post-28367752366906826582012-03-11T07:47:34.427+00:002012-03-11T07:47:34.427+00:00Interestingly, they say the distinction is rather ...<i>Interestingly, they say the distinction is rather that of quantity, fortes being long, I presume, so Lipman's informants' ʁaːt vs ˈʁaːt ˈtə seems to make good sense.</i><br /><br />Didn't mean people speaking Standard German with a non-Standard German accent, though. the <i>ˈtə </i> was just their attempt to emphasise the <i>t</i> for me, of course. My point was they <i>don't</i> have a difference between <i>Rad</i> and <i>Rat</i> in actual speech.Phillip Mindenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16801818752833289089noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-377103124456226005.post-40501741959486096662012-03-11T07:43:13.614+00:002012-03-11T07:43:13.614+00:00some Standard German speakers in Switzerland do no...<i>some Standard German speakers in Switzerland do not apply the usual German neutralization of voiced-unvoiced pairs word-finally, so that they really do pronounce Rad and Rat differently. Am I imagining this?</i><br /><br />No. Some Standard German speakers in England or Serbia do the same.Phillip Mindenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16801818752833289089noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-377103124456226005.post-28391159983032621252012-03-11T07:33:20.144+00:002012-03-11T07:33:20.144+00:00'bẽəd'(in Buffalo NY, Rochester NY)
bæd (...'bẽəd'(in Buffalo NY, Rochester NY)<br />bæd (in Lake Placid NY, Plattsburgh NY)Pianomanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15648008088325003262noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-377103124456226005.post-73939977996186315522012-03-10T21:24:21.933+00:002012-03-10T21:24:21.933+00:00It's not quite true that it's rare in all ...It's not quite true that it's rare in all areas outside the NCS region. It's also how "bad" is pronounced in the New York and Philadelphia accents.AJDhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15212125374163334242noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-377103124456226005.post-18972029972712766642012-03-10T20:25:17.619+00:002012-03-10T20:25:17.619+00:00'bẽəd' is rare outside the Northern Citie...'bẽəd' is rare outside the Northern Cities region (Chicago, Cleveland, Buffalo). In Valley Girl sociolect it's [bad], as in CVShifted Canadian English and Upton-RP.Tom Shttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03653481864265445860noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-377103124456226005.post-46088229430094730932012-03-10T11:55:29.493+00:002012-03-10T11:55:29.493+00:00Ad Jongseong
yes, in this sense sure. Interesting...Ad Jongseong<br /><br />yes, in this sense sure. Interestingly, they say the distinction is rather that of quantity, fortes being long, I presume, so Lipman's informants' ʁaːt vs ˈʁaːt ˈtə seems to make good sense.<br /><br />Ad John Cowan<br /><br />I don't wanna be a kill-joy, but one strange thing I seem to establish concerning your self-exemplifying terms is that while most of them don't exist (tefoissink, for instance), some do, e.g. 'adjectival' or 'adverbially'. Otherwise---very funny and congrats if you made them all up yourself. You seem to be very skilled at inventing various things concerning languages, for instance your other entry where you say that Czech is Slovak in a German mouth or some such.Podpora społeczeństwahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08339088245843399386noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-377103124456226005.post-27995691204852617102012-03-10T00:54:47.954+00:002012-03-10T00:54:47.954+00:00That was badly formulated. I meant Standard German...That was badly formulated. I meant Standard German as spoken in Switzerland by the germanophone Swiss who would speak Swiss German in their everyday lives.<br /><br />The 'voiced' obstruents are not fully voiced in this variety of German (and in Swiss German) so it might be better to call them lenis, but you know what I meant. :) Anyway, I've found the following sentence in the Wikipedia article on Swiss German that seems to support a distinction between Rad and Rat being kept for these speakers (it also uses the language of 'voicing' and 'devoicing', by the way):<br /><br />'Neither Swiss German nor the Swiss national variety of standard German exhibits final devoicing, unlike the German national variety of standard German (for example, "Zug" is pronounced [tsuːɡ] and not [tsuːk]).' (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_German#Pronunciation)Jongseonghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12558136756392729306noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-377103124456226005.post-4227002593814265042012-03-09T21:40:02.201+00:002012-03-09T21:40:02.201+00:00Ad Jongseong
I am not sure who you mean; Standard...Ad Jongseong<br /><br />I am not sure who you mean; Standard German speakers in Switzerland? Germans, Austrians, other germanophone foreigners? In Swiss German the voiced-unvoiced at least for stops doesn't exist, only lenis-fortis, this is the theory at least.Podpora społeczeństwahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08339088245843399386noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-377103124456226005.post-21073263058711487292012-03-09T21:24:20.232+00:002012-03-09T21:24:20.232+00:00More self-exemplifying linguistic terms.<a href="http://recycledknowledge.blogspot.com/2011/05/final-complete-authoritative-list-of.html" rel="nofollow">More self-exemplifying linguistic terms.</a>John Cowanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11452247999156925669noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-377103124456226005.post-20871657128847169592012-03-09T21:16:20.822+00:002012-03-09T21:16:20.822+00:00I thought that at least some Standard German speak...I thought that at least some Standard German speakers in Switzerland do not apply the usual German neutralization of voiced-unvoiced pairs word-finally, so that they really do pronounce Rad and Rat differently. Am I imagining this?Jongseonghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12558136756392729306noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-377103124456226005.post-76532185411827731302012-03-09T16:40:43.222+00:002012-03-09T16:40:43.222+00:00Better that than diplolology. Once you've star...Better that than diplolology. Once you've started suffering from diplololologitis, there is no end.Podpora społeczeństwahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08339088245843399386noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-377103124456226005.post-3122962921696974952012-03-09T16:04:43.543+00:002012-03-09T16:04:43.543+00:00I've seen both and see no cause to apolologise...I've seen both and see no cause to apolologise.Phillip Mindenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16801818752833289089noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-377103124456226005.post-8430827129312650032012-03-09T15:55:04.313+00:002012-03-09T15:55:04.313+00:00Morphophonemes. You have been the victim of haplo...<i>Morphophonemes</i>. You have been the victim of haplogy.John Cowanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11452247999156925669noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-377103124456226005.post-54086615333411934792012-03-09T15:54:20.118+00:002012-03-09T15:54:20.118+00:00Thanks, AJD. I would write [ˈvido] for what I say...Thanks, AJD. I would write [ˈvido] for what I say, with no off-glide.John Cowanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11452247999156925669noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-377103124456226005.post-45951161483008171282012-03-09T14:51:11.652+00:002012-03-09T14:51:11.652+00:00Somewhere between many and most (but by no means a...Somewhere between many and most (but by no means all) American dialects distinguish clearly between "writing" and "riding" on the basis of the vowel.AJDhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15212125374163334242noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-377103124456226005.post-43509979305837359222012-03-09T14:22:48.209+00:002012-03-09T14:22:48.209+00:00Army1987:
Yes, your use of dots let me know you m...Army1987: <br />Yes, your use of dots let me know you meant syllabification, not hyphenation. So did I.teardrophttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08558731895978834662noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-377103124456226005.post-75964075961428823252012-03-09T11:21:07.357+00:002012-03-09T11:21:07.357+00:00teardrop:
I meant phonologically (as described in ...teardrop:<br />I meant phonologically (as described in Wells' <i>Syllabification and allophony</i>, not orthographically (the traditional way of hyphenating words at the end of the line). I should have used phonetic symbols rather than orthography.army1987https://www.blogger.com/profile/01166052755101226806noreply@blogger.com