 |
 | Home | Contact Us | FAQ | Search & Site Map | Link to Us |
 | Sign In | Join | Other 45 Sites in Network |
| HomeDiscussion GroupsEnglish UsageBritish EnglishESL Teaching Learnglish.com Contact UsLink To UsSearch & Site Map |
Discussion Groups / English Usage / January 2009For which speakers are [a] and [&] allophones?
The answer might actually be "none", but I'm wondering for which English-speakers are [a] and [&] allophones. I've certainly heard many BrE-speakers use [&] in stressed syllables of borrowed words where I would normally use [a] or [A], such as "pasta" ['p& stR]. Are these truly allophones? In most AmE accents, [a] and [A] are allophones, but [&] has no allophones. OED3 gives /'past@/ for BrE and /'pAst@/ for AmE, which matches my expections more closely. The [&]-for-(foreign?)-[a] pronunciation is also heard from some, but not all, Canadians; I'm not sure what the demographic distinction is. (I have a suspicion that Knowlton Nash would have used [&] and Peter Mansbridge [A], but it's been a long time since I've heard the former.) -GAWollman  SignatureGarrett A. Wollman | The real tragedy of human existence is not that we are wollman@csail.mit.edu| nasty by nature, but that a cruel structural asymmetry Opinions not those | grants to rare events of meanness such power to shape of MIT or CSAIL. | our history. - S.J. Gould, Ten Thousand Acts of Kindness > The answer might actually be "none", but I'm wondering for which > English-speakers are [a] and [&] allophones. I've certainly heard > many BrE-speakers use [&] in stressed syllables of borrowed words > where I would normally use [a] or [A], such as "pasta" ['p& stR]. Are > these truly allophones? In most AmE accents, [a] and [A] are > allophones, but [&] has no allophones. I don't get that. I thought only phonemes had allophones. If you mean /&/, I believe a lot of Americans say /&/ differently before nasals--higher and more to the front and diphthongal, if I'm not mistaken. Oh meean! > OED3 gives /'past@/ for BrE > and /'pAst@/ for AmE, which matches my expections more closely. ... I'm not sure it works that way. If I hear an Italian say ['pasta], I might hear the [a]s as /A/ with an Italian accent, but if I hear someone from England (especially northern England?) pronounce "cat" as [kat], I'd hear the [a] as /&/ in that English accent. Is it useful to use "allophone" for sounds you hear but don't produce? -- Jerry Friedman >I don't get that. I thought only phonemes had allophones. OED defines "allophone" as "any of the variants making up a single phoneme", so you're right that I wrote imprecisely. ("Allophone" for me was in the same class as "synonym" or "homophone", but I see now that it should be more like "elaboration" or "realization". Mental model adjusted appropriately.) >If you mean /&/, I believe a lot of Americans say /&/ differently >before nasals--higher and more to the front and diphthongal, if I'm >not mistaken. Oh meean! You're right that I hadn't thought of that particular realization, although I'm not sure which accents it's present in. >I'm not sure it works that way. If I hear an Italian say ['pasta], I >might hear the [a]s as /A/ with an Italian accent, but if I hear >someone from England (especially northern England?) pronounce "cat" as >[kat], I'd hear the [a] as /&/ in that English accent. > >Is it useful to use "allophone" for sounds you hear but don't produce? Well, given that I'm asking about the perception of those sounds by the people who do produce them, yes. Or rather, I am interested in the distribution of people for whom [&] and [a] are both possible realizations of /a/. This seems to be the case for what OED3 calls "in use among educated urban speakers of standard English in Britain": their pronunciation chart shows /a/ for "British English" and /&/ for "American English" with the same example words for both (and does not show /a/ for AmE or /&/ for BrE). Interestingly, the OED2 pronunciation guide ("educated speech of southern England") represents things somewhat differently, so it is necessary to take note of which edition a particular entry comes from. "Bath" is shown in OED3 as /baT/ or /bA.T/ but in OED2 only as /bA.T/. OED2 does show /&/ for "pat" /p&t/, and its only example for /a/ is "French _mari_" /mari/. OED2's pronunciation of "cat" is /k&t/ -- I wonder if they will be changing this in OED3. -GAWollman SignatureGarrett A. Wollman | The real tragedy of human existence is not that we are wollman@csail.mit.edu| nasty by nature, but that a cruel structural asymmetry Opinions not those | grants to rare events of meanness such power to shape of MIT or CSAIL. | our history. - S.J. Gould, Ten Thousand Acts of Kindness >("Allophone" for me was in the same class as "synonym" or >"homophone", but I see now that it should be more like "elaboration" >or "realization". Mental model adjusted appropriately.) I should point out that I knew the Canadian meaning of "allophone" long before I had ever heard of the phoneticists' older gloss. That prefix "allo-" is unexpectedly productive. It was only a few years ago that I learned the useful word "allopatry"; there's also "allometry" which I haven't quite understood in technical usage. (From the same group of evolutionary biologists there's also "allochrony".) -GAWollman SignatureGarrett A. Wollman | The real tragedy of human existence is not that we are wollman@csail.mit.edu| nasty by nature, but that a cruel structural asymmetry Opinions not those | grants to rare events of meanness such power to shape of MIT or CSAIL. | our history. - S.J. Gould, Ten Thousand Acts of Kindness > In article <6e7c2d81-7c11-44a0-bb5e-831364759...@e22g2000vbe.googlegroups.com>, > [quoted text clipped - 45 lines] > Opinions not those | grants to rare events of meanness such power to shape > of MIT or CSAIL. | our history. - S.J. Gould, Ten Thousand Acts of Kindness The first thing an American notices when hearing a Brit speak is the way the Brit treats all pronuncations represented by the letter a. Bath, castle, can't -- bunches more that the American pronounces with the sound Noah Webster declared to be a "short a" (/&/) but that the Brit (the ones who get on screen, anyway) pronounces with a "broad a" (/A/ or /a/). Other words that the American uses the broad a in, the Brit does with a short a. A very few, we pronounce the same -- and I have no idea how Brits decide which word gets which a. After that, we wonder what happened to the syllable-ending r, until realizing that sound moved to a position between vowels and became a flip instead of a retrograde. (From _Blake's 7_: characters named Dainer and Dayna; both are pronounced /'deI n@/ except when followed by a word that begins with a vowel, when both are pronounced /'deI n@r/. Thank goodness they were not in the same episode, or even the same season! Excuse me, series.) Eventually, we realize our vocabularies are not exactly the same. "Biscuit" may have been the first one I noticed, when reading English-authored mysteries. I don't know that I'd count /a/ and /A/ as allophones in American. Most speakers use both, always using the same one in a particular word. If anyone were to use the same vowel in "bother" and "daughter," everyone hearing would figure (at best) no education. And they do contrast: /dAn/ and /dan/, for example. In American, /&/ is a completely different sound. /@/ is the general vowel that can be spelled any way at all; it is very similar to /V/. > [ ... ] > I don't know that I'd count /a/ and /A/ as allophones in American. > Most speakers use both, always using the same one in a particular > word. If anyone were to use the same vowel in "bother" and > "daughter," everyone hearing would figure (at best) no education. And > they do contrast: /dAn/ and /dan/, for example. One of my sons-in-law is called Don, the other is called Dan, both Americans. The two names sound quite different in AmE, as in BrE, but unfortunately that the way Americans say Don is closer to the way English people say Dan than to the way they say Don. I'm hoping that my unmarried daughter doesn't marry a Denis or a Dunstan (no likelihood of that at present). > In American, /&/ is a completely different sound. /@/ is the general > vowel that can be spelled any way at all; it is very similar to /V/. Signatureathel On Jan 24, 9:41 am, Athel Cornish-Bowden <acorn...@ibsm.cnrs-mrs.fr> wrote: > > [ ... ] > > I don't know that I'd count /a/ and /A/ as allophones in American. [quoted text clipped - 15 lines] > -- > athel Dan, Don, Dawn -- /d&n/, /dAn/, /dan/. In American. Although in some American accents, /&/ moves toward /E/; rural Ohio takes /&/ all the way to /E/. IPA has added, fairly recently, another "a" pronunciation; OED uses it, but I don't know how it is to be pronounced. (Why does OED use French examples to explain pronunciations?) The backward script a; shown on the chart as back open unrounded. Is that the "tight" British pronunciation of /&/? What Josephine Tey referred to as the "flat a" in _Brat Farrar_? > On Jan 24, 9:41 am, Athel Cornish-Bowden <acorn...@ibsm.cnrs-mrs.fr> > wrote: [quoted text clipped - 26 lines] > it, but I don't know how it is to be pronounced. (Why does OED use > French examples to explain pronunciations?) Because it gives "foreign" pronunciations of words that contain sounds absent from English, or present in English only in diphthongs. > The backward script a; > shown on the chart as back open unrounded. Is that the "tight" > British pronunciation of /&/? What Josephine Tey referred to as the > "flat a" in _Brat Farrar_? The symbol I'd call "backward script a" represents a back open *rounded* vowel, RP "hot". (It's like our "father" vowel but shaded toward "o".) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_back_rounded_vowel The back open *unrounded* vowel is the "father" vowel. I could call that a script a. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_back_unrounded_vowel I imagine both of those symbols have been in IPA from the beginning. If you want information about a different vowel symbol, you could try finding it at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vowel and click on it. -- Jerry Friedman >> [ ... ] > [quoted text clipped - 10 lines] > my unmarried daughter doesn't marry a Denis or a Dunstan (no > likelihood of that at present). Well, saying Denny, wouldn't be so bad, but calling someone Dunny? Hm. (I mean, the Brits might have a problem. In the US, it wouldn't raise many eyebrows. Like Randy, you know.) >>> [ ... ] >> [quoted text clipped - 13 lines] >(I mean, the Brits might have a problem. In the US, it wouldn't raise >many eyebrows. Like Randy, you know.) "Denny" can't be used as a name anymore, IMO, now that the Denny's Restaurant chain has left such a bad taste in the mouth. SignatureRegards, Chuck Riggs Near Dublin, Ireland [ ... ] > "Denny" can't be used as a name anymore, IMO, now that the Denny's > Restaurant chain has left such a bad taste in the mouth. You plainly do not watch the American TV show "Gray's Anatomy." (No relation to the book.) Oh, nice literal use of a metaphor, Chuck. SignatureBob Lieblich Mrs. Bob never misses it; I wouldn't miss it either, if it left >[ ... ] > [quoted text clipped - 3 lines] >You plainly do not watch the American TV show "Gray's Anatomy." (No >relation to the book.) A show that I used to like, but has now jumped the shark. The shark's name is Denny. The show is "Grey's Anatomy". The reference book is "Gray's Anatomy". SignatureTony Cooper - Orlando, Florida tony cooper filted: >>You plainly do not watch the American TV show "Gray's Anatomy." (No >>relation to the book.) > >The show is "Grey's Anatomy". The reference book is "Gray's Anatomy". Just remember: gray is a color; grey is a colour....r Signature"You got Schadenfreude on my Weltanschauung!" "You got Weltanschauung in my Schadenfreude!" > >[ ... ] > > [quoted text clipped - 5 lines] > > A show that I used to like, but has now jumped the shark. Agreed. I've shared the identical observation with Mrs. Bob. She continues to watch it anyway. I hum along. > The shark's name is Denny. The show is a veritable school of sharks. How about the episode where they successfully operated on something inoperable? A paradox, no? And the intern who volunteered for an off-the-books appendectomy? I'm expecting the last episode to end the way St. Elsewhere's did. (Now, there was a doctor show!) > The show is "Grey's Anatomy". The reference book is "Gray's Anatomy". Ya got me. I'm always so careful to spell the book's name correctly that I got caught in an overcorrection. IMO, there are several anatomies on the show preferable to Grey's. SignatureBob Lieblich On the via trivia >> >[ ... ] >> > [quoted text clipped - 23 lines] > >IMO, there are several anatomies on the show preferable to Grey's. Yes. I gave a rave review to "Grant's" this morning, in a new thread. SignatureRegards, Chuck Riggs Near Dublin, Ireland >>[ ... ] >> [quoted text clipped - 8 lines] > >The show is "Grey's Anatomy". The reference book is "Gray's Anatomy". "Gray's" is the recognized classic. Before buying a copy I asked my doctor if he'd recommend it or if it had become outdated. He said that, while it is a fine work, the detail would probably overwhelm me. The book he recommended is "Grant's Atlas of Anatomy" by Anne M.R. Agur and Arthur F. Dalley. Although the medical terms are a mouthful, it takes a systemic approach to the body that is easy to follow. Best of all, the many colour plates, all carefully labeled, are fantastic. SignatureRegards, Chuck Riggs Near Dublin, Ireland >[ ... ] > [quoted text clipped - 3 lines] >You plainly do not watch the American TV show "Gray's Anatomy." (No >relation to the book.) "Grey's Anatomy", with an "e" in this country, airs in Ireland tonight, but since I have yet to become hooked, I'll be watching "Charlie Bird's Arctic Journey" after the news, "Panorama", about an unending bad-language debacle in British broadcasting, and one of my favourite shows, "University Challenge". >Oh, nice literal use of a metaphor, Chuck. Thank you, Bob. SignatureRegards, Chuck Riggs Near Dublin, Ireland > On Sun, 25 Jan 2009 10:01:23 -0500, Robert Lieblich > [quoted text clipped - 23 lines] > Chuck Riggs > Near Dublin, Ireland The TV show is Grey's Anatomy in the U.S., too. With an "e" is a more upmarket way to spell it, doncha know. ... > "Grey's Anatomy", with an "e" in this country, airs in Ireland > tonight, but since I have yet to become hooked, I'll be watching > "Charlie Bird's Arctic Journey" after the news, "Panorama", about an > unending bad-language debacle in British broadcasting, and one of my > favourite shows, "University Challenge". Do you think you'd like the SDC if you waited till it was over and then read it all in half an hour? -- Jerry Friedman >... > [quoted text clipped - 6 lines] >Do you think you'd like the SDC if you waited till it was over and >then read it all in half an hour? Unlike the questions on the Summer Doldrums Contest, which irritate me because they often involve hours of research to uncover obscure trivialities, the questions on University Challenge are generally about straightforward, substantive matters most educated people have, at least, been exposed to. Even when I can only answer a few of the questions on UC, I often come away thinking I've learned something worthwhile or, sometimes, I am reminded of something I'd like to investigate further. Unfortunately, the UC format does not lend itself to the Internet or, at least, it would not work in a newsgroup, it seems to me, where the time element is removed. Given unlimited time to answer a question, the questions asked must ultimately involve either the solution of a very difficult equation or, with Google opening as many portals as it does, a search for some utterly trivial piece of information, in my opinion. Am I making sense, Jerry? SignatureRegards, Chuck Riggs Near Dublin, Ireland >>... >> [quoted text clipped - 23 lines] >opinion. >Am I making sense, Jerry? You are making perfect sense to me. I usually skim though the SDC stuff, occasionally getting involved in a question, usually where the interesting aspect is uncovering possible sources of information on an obscure topic. In those cases the question setter's original answer often becomes largely irrelevant. The constraint of devising questions which are not instantly answerable from standard refence books or online sources can be interesting in itself; quite a few of the UC questions are of that kind, but I agree that removing the time constraint make it an entirely different, and often less interesting, exercise. Not always, though. SignatureDon Aitken Mail to the From: address is not read. To email me, substitute "clara.co.uk" for "freeuk.com" >>>... >>> [quoted text clipped - 34 lines] >constraint make it an entirely different, and often less interesting, >exercise. Not always, though. With my enjoyment of puzzles, math problems and challenges, I can see where searching for an item of trivia could prove interesting, but since few of us have access to a great library, doesn't success with the SDC hinge on a person's patience and his skill in using an Internet search engine? SignatureRegards, Chuck Riggs Near Dublin, Ireland ... >With my enjoyment of puzzles, math problems and challenges, I can see >where searching for an item of trivia could prove interesting, but >since few of us have access to a great library, doesn't success with >the SDC hinge on a person's patience and his skill in using an >Internet search engine? They're too bloody hard but I like reading others' wonderings. The questions are pretty much Google-proofed and patience doesn't really help as some bugger always seems to get there in a nanosecond, at least for the few I have any chance with. Great fun a few SDCs ago was the scavenger hunt where each puzzle was answered by a word that led to the next puzzle. That one could be played by those of us who are always catching up with the group and was not spoiled by others getting there first. SignatureRichard Bollard Canberra Australia To email, I'm at AMT not spAMT. Richard Bollard filted: >... >> [quoted text clipped - 13 lines] >played by those of us who are always catching up with the group and >was not spoiled by others getting there first. Loved that one, even though I had no chance of getting to the finish line...after two or three people had posted what I'm sure they thought were cryptic references to some word beginning with Q, I had no doubt as to what the word had to be.... Oh, and there *have* been questions with mathematical underpinnings...I even submitted one of them....r Signature"You got Schadenfreude on my Weltanschauung!" "You got Weltanschauung in my Schadenfreude!" >Richard Bollard filted: >> [quoted text clipped - 23 lines] >Oh, and there *have* been questions with mathematical underpinnings...I even >submitted one of them....r Good show. I'll keep my eye out for more. SignatureRegards, Chuck Riggs Near Dublin, Ireland >... >> [quoted text clipped - 13 lines] >played by those of us who are always catching up with the group and >was not spoiled by others getting there first. Since I have been largely ignoring the SDC puzzles over the years I didn't participate in that one, but it does sound interesting. SignatureRegards, Chuck Riggs Near Dublin, Ireland > >... > > [quoted text clipped - 23 lines] > opinion. > Am I making sense, Jerry? Definitely. A lot of the SDC questions in earlier years were just about trivial knowledge, and the reason for changing was exactly the one you state. However, now we try to have a lot of questions whose meaning is disguised somehow (not totally different from the idea behind cryptic crosswords). I don't think there's that much of the hours-of-research kind. -- Jerry Friedman just had an interesting idea for an SDC question. >> >... >> > [quoted text clipped - 30 lines] >behind cryptic crosswords). I don't think there's that much of the >hours-of-research kind. If by disguised you mean a contestant would need to have the knowledge gained from a liberal arts degree to correctly answer the questions, I'm out of luck. In postings, I am often awed by the group's collective knowledge of languages, history, general science and literature. Being an engineer, virtually all my schooling after the age of seventeen was in mathematics, physics and engineering and it doesn't seem that the SDC questions relate to those topics. SignatureRegards, Chuck Riggs Near Dublin, Ireland ... > The first thing an American notices when hearing a Brit speak is the > way the Brit treats all pronuncations represented by the letter a. [quoted text clipped - 3 lines] > a" (/A/ or /a/). Other words that the American uses the broad a in, > the Brit does with a short a. The only ones I can think of are borrowings from other languages, such as "pasta", which Garrett was talking about in the original post. > A very few, we pronounce the same -- > and I have no idea how Brits decide which word gets which a. All the words in which the "a" is followed by a stop get the same short "a" that we use, so there are a great many words we pronounce (pretty much) the same: dab, lack, had, sag, cap, batter.... However, when the "a" is followed by some other consonant, you just have to know. > After that, we wonder what happened to the syllable-ending r, ... That's the one I noticed first. And the long "o". > I don't know that I'd count /a/ and /A/ as allophones in American. > Most speakers use both, always using the same one in a particular > word. If anyone were to use the same vowel in "bother" and > "daughter," everyone hearing would figure (at best) no education. ... In the usual system in a.u.e., the vowel in "daughter" is /O/. /a/ is a vowel between "spa" and "spat", written with an "a" in IPA and in the (some?) Romance languages. !Caramba! Mangia la pasta! Ca va? In America, you can hear something like it in the Northern Cities "I gat the jab in Chacaga" or a stereotypical Texan "Bye". -- Jerry Friedman "¡Caramba! Ça va?" if it makes anyone feel any better. ... > If anyone were to use the same vowel in "bother" and > "daughter," everyone hearing would figure (at best) no education. And > they do contrast: /dAn/ and /dan/, for example. ... I meant to add that this is not true. A great many Americans pronounce "don" the same as "dawn" and "cot" the same as "caught" the same. Here's a map from a linguistic survey: http://www.ling.upenn.edu/phono_atlas/maps/Map1.html (in the scheme used by those Penn guys, /o/ is the "cot" vowel and / oh/ is the "caught" vowel), and a rather technical discussion: http://www.ling.upenn.edu/phono_atlas/Atlas_chapters/Ch13_2nd.rev.pdf You can try http://cfprod01.imt.uwm.edu/Dept/FLL/linguistics/dialect/staticmaps/q_28.html for a different survey, but it didn't load for me just now. (Thanks to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonological_history_of_English_low_back_vowels for the links.) So those of us who'd notice pronouncing "don" and "dawn" the same would be as likely to think "Californian" or "Iowan" as "no education". Or "Pittsburgher"--watch what you say about my mother! (Kidding.) There was much, maybe too much, discussion of this matter in this newsgroup in former days. If you're interested, you could search for "CIC" (cot is caught) and "CINC" (it is not). Some will be glad to know that Aaron Dinkin is still interested in it. http://www.ling.upenn.edu/~dinkin/ -- Jerry Friedman On Jan 24, 11:02 pm, "jerry_fried...@yahoo.com" <jerry_fried...@yahoo.com> wrote: > ... > [quoted text clipped - 42 lines] > -- > Jerry Friedman Don and Dawn have never sounded alike to me, in Indiana or Texas. Listen to Carol Burnett sing "hall," then Julie Andrews repeat the line. Carol says [hal] (same vowel as dawn; I think that's /a/, the single-dotted a from Webster, the IPA typed a. Julie says [hOl], the backward c of IPA. I first encountered IPA in French class, and was helped tremendously with M-W's Collegiate pronunciations. In French, one learns a range of sounds that are present in American English too: A a O o. The major change across this spectrum is that the mouth goes from wide open to almost closed. Evan? > On Jan 24, 11:02 pm, "jerry_fried...@yahoo.com" > [quoted text clipped - 47 lines] > > Don and Dawn have never sounded alike to me, in Indiana or Texas. Not surprising, if you look at the big map at <http://www.ling.upenn.edu/phono_atlas/maps/Map1L.html>. None of the Indianan (sorry, Tony) speakers consistently merged the two vowels, though many did some of the time. The only Texans who consistently merged them were in the Panhandle and West Texas. I can assure you that most people in New Mexico, except transplanted Easterners, merge them all the time. > Listen to Carol Burnett sing "hall," then Julie Andrews repeat the > line. Sorry, what song is that? > Carol says [hal] (same vowel as dawn; I think that's /a/, the > single-dotted a from Webster, the IPA typed a. Julie says [hOl], the > backward c of IPA. And there you put your finger on a problem. There doesn't seem to be an IPA symbol for the vowel in, say, M-W pronunciation clips of words with "aw". In RP, that vowel is [O:], and people often use the same symbol for the "standard American" "aw", but as you say, they're very noticeably different. I once asked in sci.lang for a symbol for the M- W sound clips, and got no answer. > I first encountered IPA in French class, and was > helped tremendously with M-W's Collegiate pronunciations. In French, [quoted text clipped - 3 lines] > > Evan? I look forward to his comments, but you can see his chart at http://www.kirshenbaum.net/IPA/ascii-ipa.pdf If you scroll down, you can see a comparison of ASCII IPA, IPA, and M- W symbols. You'll notice /A/ is "script a", M-W a with two dots, as in "bother" and "cot". /A./ is "turned script a", M-W a with one dot, as in "father" and "cart", for those who don't rhyme "bother" and "father". (Evan, could you possibly have those backwards in the M-W chart? I was sure that script a was the unrounded one as in "father" and the turned version was the rounded one, as in RP "bother", and that's how they are in your specification tables. My memory also agrees with http://alt-usage-english.org/ipa/ascii_ipa_combined.shtml ) /O/ is "backwards C", M-W o with one dot, as in "saw" and "all". /a/ is the same in IPA and M-W. The only examples are the diphthongs / aU/ as in "now" and /aI/ as in "site" and "side". Since you know French, I can add that it's the vowel of "bas" meaning "low". ("Bas" meaning "stocking" is traditionally pronounced with the "father" vowel, although I think Isabelle Cecchini has told us many French people now pronounce it the same as the "low" word.) -- Jerry Friedman jerry_friedman@yahoo.com a écrit : [...] > > /a/ is the same in IPA and M-W. The only examples are the diphthongs / > aU/ as in "now" and /aI/ as in "site" and "side". Since you know > French, I can add that it's the vowel of "bas" meaning "low". ("Bas" > meaning "stocking" is traditionally pronounced with the "father" > vowel, although I think Isabelle Cecchini has told us many French > people now pronounce it the same as the "low" word.) Have I? I must have been even muddier in my explanations than usual, then. The traditional pronunciation of French "bas", whether it means "low" or "stocking" is / bA/. Other words have the / a/ pronunciation, for instance "na", / na/, or "ta", / ta/. What's been happening recently, is that people have lost that distinction, and will pronounce all those words with the same vowel. For some, it will be the / A/ vowel, for some others the / a/ vowel, and for other people still, a sort of median vowel. Some pairs which thus lose the traditional distinction will be "pâte/patte" and "mâle/mal". SignatureIsabelle Cecchini > jerry_friedman@yahoo.com a écrit : > [...] [quoted text clipped - 16 lines] > other people still, a sort of median vowel. Some pairs which thus lose > the traditional distinction will be "pâte/patte" and "mâle/mal". And then there are a number of mainly Parisian intellectuals who pronounce words like "table" almost with an /A./ sound, although they are probably thinking "â". SignatureRob Bannister On Jan 29, 1:40 am, Isabelle Cecchini <isabelle.cecch...@wanadoo.fr.invalid> wrote: > jerry_fried...@yahoo.com a écrit : > [...] [quoted text clipped - 17 lines] > other people still, a sort of median vowel. Some pairs which thus lose > the traditional distinction will be "pâte/patte" and "mâle/mal". Sorry, I must have remembered wrong (though what I wrote seems to have been literally true). -- Jerry Friedman |
Reply to this Message |
 Sign In
 Join
 My Latest Posts My Monitored Threads My Blog My Photo Gallery My Profile My Homepage Start New Thread Enable EMail Alerts Rate this Thread
|
©2012 Advenet LLC Privacy Policy - Terms of Use
This website includes both content owned or controlled by Advenet as well as content owned or controlled by third parties.