Maugham mom taught tot, caught cot, pawed pod, sought awed sot, sawed odd sod,

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T. Z. - 07 Jan 2005 02:17 GMT

I still like my first output best: Who'd heed 'hood
HUD head had hoed, hawed, & hid his hod?

Re: Cyd sighed & sawed, sued sad sod, & sowed said
seed.
I used "Cyd" rather than "Sid" because "Sid" looks
like it could be an acronym. SIDS, SIRDS

Peter T. Daniels wrote:

>> (Btw, [a] and [a:] are never contrastive, right?
>> I smell a linguistic anecdote.)
>
> Length isn't phonemic in English generally. If there

were two words distinguished only by vowel length, it
would turn out to be a side-effect of something else,
such as r-deletion or "voicing" of the following
obstruent.

I tend to believe that (for most people) the length is
a bigger cue (than the vowels) in distiguishing
between the following minimal pairs.

Maugham mom taught tot, caught cot, pawed pod,
sought awed sot,
sawed odd sod,
hawed, bought hod, bot & cock-calk (not naught),

(This is more like a traditional tongue twister.
Are there traditional tongue twisters that focus on
vowels?)

By James Joyce:
Sinbad the Sailor and Tinbad the Tailor and Jinbad the
Jailer and Whinbad the Whaler and Ninbad the Nailer
and Finbad the Failer and Binbad the Bailer and Pinbad
the Pailer and Minbad the Mailer and Hinbad the Hailer
and Rinbad the Railer and Dinbad the Kailer and Vinbad
the Quailer and Linbad the Yailer and Xinbad the
Phthailer.

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Peter T. Daniels - 07 Jan 2005 14:00 GMT

> > Length isn't phonemic in English generally. If there
> were two words distinguished only by vowel length, it
[quoted text clipped - 10 lines]
> sawed odd sod,
> hawed, bought hod, bot & cock-calk (not naught),

Every one of those pairs is distinguished by quality rather than length
(except, of course, for the benighted "cot/caught" mergerers, for whom I
gather they are the same). (awed = sought, odd = sod)

> (This is more like a traditional tongue twister.
> Are there traditional tongue twisters that focus on
[quoted text clipped - 8 lines]
> the Quailer and Linbad the Yailer and Xinbad the
> Phthailer.

That's the very antithesis of a tongue twister, since the consonants are
not repeated or alternated in an articulatorily difficult way. How do
you pronounce the very last fellow and his occupation?

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Peter T. Daniels grammatim@att.net

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Matt Beckwith - 08 Jan 2005 17:52 GMT

> Maugham mom taught tot, caught cot, pawed pod,
> sought awed sot,
> sawed odd sod,
> hawed, bought hod, bot & cock-calk (not naught),

I'm having trouble making sense of this. Did you mean:

Maugham's mom taught the tot, caught the cot, pawed the pod, sought an
awed sot, sawed an odd sod, hawed, bought a hod, a bot and a cock-calk
(not naught).

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Discussion Groups / British English / January 2005

Maugham mom taught tot, caught cot, pawed pod, sought awed sot, sawed odd sod,