American pronunciation
Mark Barratt
One of the most prominent features of American pronunciation, to my
British ear, and one which I don't remember being discussed at any
length here, is the assimilation of 't' to 'd' in certain words.
I was thinking about this yesterday (Dutch has this phenomenon to an
even greater extent, and in both directions) when it occurred to me that
what I hear and what an American hear are not necessarily the same.
The word 'matter', for example, I would expect to reach my ears as
'madder' if spoken by an American. But the question is, does that mean
that Americans don't distinguish between these two words, or only that
my ear does not hear the distinction?
I would ask an American in person, but they seem to be in short supply
hereabouts this season.
ref
> One of the most prominent features of American pronunciation, to my
> British ear, and one which I don't remember being discussed at any
> length here, is the assimilation of 't' to 'd' in certain words.
We've discussed this a little bit. I think it has been stated that the
/t/ is softened to a [*] sound, not exactly [d], and that /d/ is realized
by the same sound, in certain situations (between vowels, especially).
(Some small number of Americans might use a more genuine [d] sound between
vowels, but I believe I have heard this and it sounds very strange.)
> I was thinking about this yesterday (Dutch has this phenomenon to an
> even greater extent, and in both directions) when it occurred to me that
> what I hear and what an American hear are not necessarily the same.
>
> The word 'matter', for example, I would expect to reach my ears as
> 'madder' if spoken by an American. But the question is, does that mean
> that Americans don't distinguish between these two words, or only that
> my ear does not hear the distinction?
Well, I can give you my thoughts on this subject. It's difficult for me
to accept the idea that "matter" and "madder" are true homophones in
American speech, the way that "their" and "there" are. In fact, I don't
accept it. There is a difference: each word is associated with a
non-identical but overlapping range of pronunciations. "Matter" is, I
believe, slightly more likely to have a shorter vowel than "madder". And
the /t/ in "matter" *can* be pronounced in a more [t]-like fashion, and
occasionally is for certain reasons, whereas this will never be done for
"madder". (If someone thought I was saying "madder" when I was saying
"matter", I might repeat "matter" with a real [t] sound.) I think related
to the probabilistic difference in vowel length is that I'd be more likely
to use a more raised /&/ vowel in "madder" and less likely to do so in
"matter"; note that my vowels in "mat" and "mad" are phonetically
distinct.
I am not writing as a phoneticist, however, but as an ignorant amateur, so
I don't know if these remarks have any value. I will say, though, that
for whatever reason I don't think all Americans *perceive* "matter" and
"madder" as homophones. This, after all, is why an American can easily
learn the British pronunciation of such words.
st...@steve-and-pattie.com
<mark.b...@chello.be> writes:
> One of the most prominent features of American pronunciation, to my
> British ear, and one which I don't remember being discussed at any
> length here, is the assimilation of 't' to 'd' in certain words.
>
> I was thinking about this yesterday (Dutch has this phenomenon to an
> even greater extent, and in both directions) when it occurred to me that
> what I hear and what an American hear are not necessarily the same.
>
> The word 'matter', for example, I would expect to reach my ears as
> 'madder' if spoken by an American. But the question is, does that mean
> that Americans don't distinguish between these two words, or only that
> my ear does not hear the distinction?
You can't hear the distinction. In American, "matter" is pronounced with the
same T-sound that you would use in, for example, "steak", where the British
pronunciation uses the sound of T in "take". And "madder" would be
pronounced rather the same way you pronounce it, though with an R sound at
the end, of course.
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Jitze Couperus
<mark.b...@chello.be> wrote:
>
>One of the most prominent features of American pronunciation, to my
>British ear, and one which I don't remember being discussed at any
>length here, is the assimilation of 't' to 'd' in certain words.
>
In some regiolects, the "t" may disapper altogether. I once
had trouble communicating with somebody because the
brand name "Del Monte" came out as "Del Mahne".
Jitze
mplsray
"Mark Barratt" <mark.b...@chello.be> wrote in message
news:drluctsse5cs1u6k0...@4ax.com...
This subject has been treated in the "Ask A Linguist" section of _The
Linguist List._
From
http://www.linguistlist.org/~ask-ling/archive-1997.5/msg00677.html
[quote]
In many cases a "t" or "d" sound between two vowels is actually
pronounced as something called a "tap", where the tongue lightly taps
against the ridge behind the upper teeth (the alveolar ridge). This
tap sound is identical for both "t" and "d", and so, for many speakers
of American English, the words "latter" and "ladder" are actually
pronounced identically.
Deborah Milam Berkley
Northwestern University
[end quote]
I note that the _American Heritage Dictionary_ online, at www.bartleby.com ,
has sound files for _latter_ and _ladder_ which use the /t/ and /d/ sounds
instead of the tap.
Now that I have to think about it, it's hard to say how I pronounce some of
these words, except for a couple. If I say "good, better, best" quickly
it's clear to me that I am pronouncing a tap in _better._ And pronouncing
"bread and butter" shows that I use a tap in _butter_ as well.
--
Raymond S. Wise
Minneapolis, Minnesota USA
GregParmele
the British already had an alternate meaning for pissed.
I think that the surrounding sounds being different in American and British
pronunciation are what cause the differences in stress, ie: the final 'er' in
matter.
Note the pronunciation of 'ed' in the word pissed, people on both sides of the
pond aspirate the final consonant making it sound like a 't'. I believe that
the 't' 'd' assimilation occurs in more words here on the left side.
GrapeApe
>>British ear, and one which I don't remember being discussed at any
>>length here, is the assimilation of 't' to 'd' in certain words.
>>
>
>In some regiolects, the "t" may disapper altogether. I once
>had trouble communicating with somebody because the
>brand name "Del Monte" came out as "Del Mahne".
Sometimes slurred, sometimes replaced with a glottal stop.
Rafal 'Negrin' Lisowski
writing:
>One of the most prominent features of American pronunciation, to my
>British ear, and one which I don't remember being discussed at any
>length here, is the assimilation of 't' to 'd' in certain words.
I am obviously not American but Polish (moreover, I'm new to the
group, so hello everybody!). However I'm a student at the English
Institute of Warsaw University, so I can give you some phonetic
theoretical info about this.
As some already mentioned, this sound is called a tap (or a flap -
actually, that's how I tend to call it). The difference between this
and /d/ is that in a flap, the tip of the tongue makes contact with
the alveolar ridge for a very short moment, so that there's no time
for the air pressure to build up and, as a cosequence, there's no
plosion.
The context for the appearance of a flap is between a vowel and a
syllabic segment (a vowel or a syllabic consonant). When inside a
word, the latter must be unstressed for a flap to appear (as in
<matter>). It may be either stressed or unstressed when the context
appears across word boundaries (hence both <t>'s in <eat it all> will
be flaps).
There is absolutely no difference between <matter> and <madder> in
AmE, even if speakers believe there is (speakers tend to perceive
difference where there are none and vice verca). Americans in here
could ask someone to pronunce both words several times in random
order, while you try to write down what you think they say - and then
check the accuracy of your guesses (of couse this other person must
keep record of what she's saying, too).
In Canadian English, however, there will be some difference in vowel
length. The length of the /&/ sound in <madder> will be analogous to
that in <bag>, compared with a shorter sound in <matter> and <back>.
Of course there will be instances of very slow speech when an American
will utter normal /t/ or /d/. I suppose that would also happen when
syllabifying.
Does this make things any clearer?
--
Rafal 'Negrin' Lisowski neg...@rpg.pl
editor http://www.rockmetal.pl webmaster http://www.inwestprojekt.com.pl
.........Uncle Sam wants you? Call child abuse helpline now!!...........
P&D Schultz
>
> One of the most prominent features of American pronunciation, to my
> British ear, and one which I don't remember being discussed at any
Generally, Americans pronounce both a "t" and a "d" identically -- as a
tap -- when either occurs alone between two vowels the first of which is
stressed. So there are pairs of words pronounced the same:
bidder/bitter, boating/boding, waiters/waders.
Those two consonants can influence a preceding vowel in different ways,
though. The diphthong in "write" is different from that in "ride", so
even though the consonants both turn to taps in "writer/rider", the
vowel difference is preserved, and the two words are pronounced
differently.
I once knew an American girl who spoke with forced meticulousness, and
would occasionally come out with things like "right in the mittle."
\\P. Schultz
Mark Barratt
>That was precisely why we started saying pissed off rather than mad but alas
>the British already had an alternate meaning for pissed.
Er, I thought it was us Brits who said "pissed off". I don't see your
point here, anyway.
>I think that the surrounding sounds being different in American and British
>pronunciation are what cause the differences in stress, ie: the final 'er' in
>matter.
OK, so I find a minimal pair that doesn't have the complication of
rhoticism. Hmm... it's not that easy. The best I can come up with is
'siting' and 'siding', but I'm not sure that the latter word is used in
the US. Ah, how about 'beating' and 'beading'? Are these words
homophones?
bg
I'm Canadian, and would make sense to me that "madder" and "matter"
would be pronounced with different vowel lengths, although I don't
really hear it when I say them myself.
I remember a couple years ago I took a phonology course, and we
learned about Canadian raising and the example of "writer" and
"rider". They're pronounced differently in Canadian English (and
probably some American versions, too). Canadian raising occurs before
voiceless consonants. So, the 't' in "writer" is voiceless, and
therefore we apply Canadian raising. After that, we change the 't' to
a flap. So we have the raising, even before a voiced consonant.
If we apply the same type of rules to "matter" and "madder", we should
have a difference in vowel length, shouldn't we? So we keep the vowel
in "matter" short, because it comes before a voiceless consonant, and
then apply the flap. This should result in "madder" having a longer
vowel, but like I said, I'm not sure if I can actually hear it myself.
The good news is that "matter" and "madder" don't usually appear in
the same context.
Joe Manfre
>There is absolutely no difference between <matter> and <madder> in
>AmE, even if speakers believe there is (speakers tend to perceive
>difference where there are none and vice verca). Americans in here
>could ask someone to pronunce both words several times in random
>order, while you try to write down what you think they say - and then
>check the accuracy of your guesses (of couse this other person must
>keep record of what she's saying, too).
>
>In Canadian English, however, there will be some difference in vowel
>length. The length of the /&/ sound in <madder> will be analogous to
>that in <bag>, compared with a shorter sound in <matter> and <back>.
Say there, friend -- the U.S. is a very big place, and we don't all
have the same pronunciation.
I definitely use a different "a" in "matter" than in "madder", which I
believe ref already described accurately. There is a certain sort of
U.S. pronunciation, which I'd perceive as midwestern or maybe
Californian, in which they do sound exactly the same to me. Here on
the East Coast, my mom didn't raise me to talk like that.
J "and I don't merge cot and caught, either" M
--
Joe Manfre, Hyattsville, Maryland.
Joe Manfre
>OK, so I find a minimal pair that doesn't have the complication of
>rhoticism. Hmm... it's not that easy. The best I can come up with is
>'siting' and 'siding', but I'm not sure that the latter word is used in
>the US. Ah, how about 'beating' and 'beading'? Are these words
>homophones?
I think I pronounce "beating" and "beading" alike, unless I'm making
some particular effort to enunciate because I don't want to confuse
anyone. "Siting" and "siding" are quite different for me, though; I
don't think they have the same first "i". I'm pretty sure I open my
mouth more to pronounce the "i" in "side". In fact, I think the "t"
in "siting" is not pronounced as "d" by USAians, but more as a genuine
"t", which may be what makes the preceding vowels sound different from
each other. (I see that Evan Kirschenbaum's ASCII IPA chart uses both
"site" and "side" as examples of /aI/, even though as I said the
vowels don't sound the same to me...)
"Beating"/"beading" is a good choice, though -- I think you hit the
nail on the head with that one.
JM
Maria Conlon
bg wrote in message
>[...]The good news is that "matter" and "madder" don't usually appear
in
>the same context.
While reading this thread, I was trying to think of when and how I might
have used the word "madder." I must have used it at some point in my
life, probably in the sense of "angrier."
Offhand, I'd say that confusing the two words "matter" and "madder" is
unlikely unless they are spoken with no context, as would be the case if
one were simply reading a list of words.
Your statement that "matter" and "madder" don't usually appear in the
same context is true of many words which are used as examples of the "t"
sounding like a "d."
I can't think of a pair of example words that would actually be confused
with each other (when used in context) even if the "t" *does* sound like
a "d."
Anyone?
Maria
Alec "Skitt" P.
"Maria Conlon" <mcon...@sprynet.com> wrote in message
news:9aoc6n$m7d$1...@slb2.atl.mindspring.net...
If I were to get madder and madder, it still would not matter. Still not
confusing.
--
Skitt (in SF Bay Area) http://i.am/skitt/
I speak English well -- I learn it from a book!
-- Manuel of "Fawlty Towers" (he's from Barcelona).
Andy Averill
"Jitze Couperus" <couperu...@znet.com> wrote in message > In some
regiolects, the "t" may disapper altogether. I once
> had trouble communicating with somebody because the
> brand name "Del Monte" came out as "Del Mahne".
Usually one hears something less than the full Monte.
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Mark Barratt
>
>bg wrote in message
>
>>[...]The good news is that "matter" and "madder" don't usually appear
>in
>>the same context.
[...]
>Your statement that "matter" and "madder" don't usually appear in the
>same context is true of many words which are used as examples of the "t"
>sounding like a "d."
>
>I can't think of a pair of example words that would actually be confused
>with each other (when used in context) even if the "t" *does* sound like
>a "d."
>
>Anyone?
I found a good pair earlier in the thread, so it's just a question of
dreaming up a context:
The sunlight glistened upon the sweat, beading upon her brow that
afternoon.
If you heard that, could you be sure that it was 'beading' and not
'beating'?
P&D Schultz
> I can't think of a pair of example words that would actually be confused
> with each other (when used in context) even if the "t" *does* sound like
> a "d."
If you asked, "Should I bring the ladder, or the step-stool?", and your
American co-worker replied, "Bring the latter.", you still wouldn't know
which to bring.
//P. Schultz
Joe Manfre
>I found a good pair earlier in the thread, so it's just a question of
>dreaming up a context:
>
>The sunlight glistened upon the sweat, beading upon her brow that
>afternoon.
>
>If you heard that, could you be sure that it was 'beading' and not
>'beating'?
Hey, that was pretty good.
I've been thinking about it some more and have decided that the
homophones happen when there are certain vowels right before the "t"
or "d" sound.
/i/ works:
"beating" sounds like "beading"
"neater" sounds like "kneader"
/E/ works:
"betting" sounds like "bedding"
"wetted" sounds like "wedded"
For me, /&/ doesn't work, because I think I use a different /&/ before
a "d" if the /&/ comes after certain consonants (including "b" and
"m"). For example, in my pronunciation:
"matter" doesn't sound like "madder"
"batter" doesn't sound like "badder"
(What do you mean, "badder" isn't a word? Sure it is.)
BUT
"patting" sounds like "padding"
"latter" sounds like "ladder"
I think there's an official name for the regional pronunciation that
influences how I pronounce words like "bad" and "mad" -- "Upper
Chesapeake something Vowel something something something-or-other" or
something like that. George "Bad to the Bone" Thorogood, who's
apparently from Delaware, seems to have it too. The "a" in those
words kind of resembles a combination of /eI/ and /@/ -- that's the
best I can describe it. It also resembles the vowel in the usual U.S.
pronunciation of "hair". When I pronounce it, my mouth contorts into
a smile-like shape.
But /&/ seems to work for many U.S. speakers, the ones who seem to
think I'm saying "bed" when I'm actually saying "bad".
Ann Burlingham
> "Maria Conlon" <mcon...@sprynet.com> wrote in message
> news:9aoc6n$m7d$1...@slb2.atl.mindspring.net...
> > Your statement that "matter" and "madder" don't usually appear in the
> > same context is true of many words which are used as examples of the "t"
> > sounding like a "d."
> >
> > I can't think of a pair of example words that would actually be confused
> > with each other (when used in context) even if the "t" *does* sound like
> > a "d."
> >
> > Anyone?
>
> If I were to get madder and madder, it still would not matter. Still not
> confusing.
I'm sure something could be worked out if one tried to make place
mats from the leaf matter of some rose madder. "Would you take
this madder matter to the matter before I get any madder?"
Huh. Saying that to myself, I find that with the second "matter,"
describing one who makes mats, I do what I seem to do with
"beading," which is to stressing the first syllable slightly.
--
Ann Burlingham <an...@concentric.net>
Maria Conlon
Mark Barratt wrote in message
No. The two words would almost certainly sound the same.
I wonder, though, when "beading" is intended, if "that was" should
replace the comma. If so, then there would be no confusion unless
someone thought that the sweat could be "beating" upon her brow. Either
way, I think the comma needs to be removed. But if you remove the comma,
then "sweat beading upon" should probably be "sweat beads on..." or
"beading sweat upon..."
If "beating" is intended in the sentence, I think the sentence would
need to be changed around a bit. For instance: "The sunlight, beating
upon her brow that afternoon, glistened upon the sweat."
In either case, does sunlight glisten upon the sweat -- or does the
sweat glisten in the sunlight?
(Mark, you have driven me crazy with your sentence. Sweat beads are
popping up all over my brow and there's no sunlight to be had at the
moment. I'm not sure that I'm even making any sense.)
Maria
Maria Conlon
P&D Schultz wrote in message
>Maria Conlon wrote:
How likely is that to happen? How often would someone use "latter" in
that case? In fact, how often does someone use "latter" in workday
conversation, when the workday involves ladders and stepstools?
I think only a real smart-ass would say "bring the latter," and said s-a
would, no doubt, be deliberately trying to confuse me. So if I
misunderstood, and s-a then laughed at my "error," s-a would next be
seen carrying or bringing a ladder or stepstool without my help.
But, yes, "latter" and "ladder" do sound alike. And I can't imagine
saying "latter" with the t's pronounced "t-ly" enough to erase the
similarity.
(Now, I wonder if you could do me a favor and quit using whatever font
you're using that pops up on my screen in double size? It's getting to
the point where I hesitate to open any post of yours, even though I
almost always enjoy reading what you have to say.)
Maria
Donna Richoux
"Writing" and "riding" are a pair that actually could theoretically
cause confusion, because their grammatical role are similar enough. I
don't ever remember being confused by them myself, but I think we've had
one report where someone was, once.
Can I invent a plausible example?
She taught riding at a private academy.
She taught writing at a private academy.
I'm not sure, if I didn't know much about about "her" and there had been
nothing about writing or riding in previous sentences, whether I would
know what she teaches from that alone.
That's the kind of situation, like funny-peculiar and funny-ha-ha, and
right-hand turn and right-correct, and ink-pen (in some dialects), where
we are apt to add another qualifying word for insurance. "Horseback
riding" in this case. I believe those who actually engage in horseback
riding scorn the word "horseback" as superfluous?
--
Donna Richoux
GrapeApe
I like oysters.
I like oyster Stew.
We'll both have oysters.
JessK...@aol.com
said:
>Joe Manfre <man...@flash.net> wrote:
>
>> Mark Barratt (mark.b...@chello.be) wrote:
>>
>> >OK, so I find a minimal pair that doesn't have the complication of
>> >rhoticism. Hmm... it's not that easy. The best I can come up with is
>> >'siting' and 'siding', but I'm not sure that the latter word is used in
>> >the US.
It is, indeed; in the construction industry, anyway. "Siding" is the
stuff, whether wood or aluminum, that forms the outer layer of many
houses.
>> > Ah, how about 'beating' and 'beading'? Are these words
>> >homophones?
<snip>
>"Writing" and "riding" are a pair that actually could theoretically
>cause confusion, because their grammatical role are similar enough. I
>don't ever remember being confused by them myself, but I think we've had
>one report where someone was, once.
I can give an example that had quite serious significance:
An engineer at my workplace solved a vexing problem in a
radio-receiver design by simply reversing the leads on the primary
winding of an inductively coupled radio-frequency circuit. (For the
technically aware, it caused the circuit to act as a bridged-T notch
filter over a narrow band of frequencies, having changed the coupling
from capacity aiding to capacity opposing.)
The powers-that-were in the remote head office heard of the change,
and we received a telegram saying:
Hardly approve of the change affecting image rejection in
the LRA-6.
Crestfallen and wanting to disbelieve, the engineer asked his
supervisor to call the head office to explain the situation to them
more carefully. It turned out that the person sending the telegram
had dictated to his secretary:
Heartily approve of the change affecting image rejection in
the LRA-6.
Yes, "heartily" has one more little syllable, but it sounded enough
like "hardly" to satisfy the secretary.
Rafal 'Negrin' Lisowski
fragile balance of Nature by writing:
>Say there, friend -- the U.S. is a very big place, and we don't all
>have the same pronunciation.
I _know_ that :)
>I definitely use a different "a" in "matter" than in "madder", which I
>believe ref already described accurately.
Meaning a longer one in 'madder'? That is the thing I described as a
rule of Canadian English? Or something different than that?
Of course you're aware of my handicap of not being able to do reseach.
I know this won't sound very convincing, but... it's just what I've
been taught :) I can ask my phonology professor tomorrow about that.
Well, maybe you're right. Right now I'm listening to myself
pronouncing 'matter' and 'madder' in as natural a way as possible (I
could describe my pronuciation as approx. 80%-accurate East Coast
American) and I think my /&/ in 'madder' is a bit more spread than in
'matter'.
>There is a certain sort of
>U.S. pronunciation, which I'd perceive as midwestern or maybe
>Californian, in which they do sound exactly the same to me. Here on
>the East Coast, my mom didn't raise me to talk like that.
With all due respect, there's something more to one's pronunciation
than just one's mother 'raising', you know :-) But I see what you
mean, anyway.
>J "and I don't merge cot and caught, either" M
I know _that_, too :)
Steve Hayes
>That was precisely why we started saying pissed off rather than mad but alas
>the British already had an alternate meaning for pissed.
Mad as in potty, or potty as in pissed in?
Do Americans distinguish between "potty" and "party"?
I think we already discussed (a few months ago) the continuing assimilation of
ticked off into pissed off.
Steve Hayes
http://www.suite101.com/myhome.cfm/methodius
Mark Barratt
>I've been thinking about it some more and have decided that the
>homophones happen when there are certain vowels right before the "t"
>or "d" sound.
[...]
>For me, /&/ doesn't work, because I think I use a different /&/ before
>a "d" if the /&/ comes after certain consonants (including "b" and
>"m"). For example, in my pronunciation:
>
>"matter" doesn't sound like "madder"
>"batter" doesn't sound like "badder"
>(What do you mean, "badder" isn't a word? Sure it is.)
No, "badder" is a word, alright, but don't you mean batsman?
Seriously, though, "mad" and "mat" have different length vowels even for
me (tho' Leftpondian "mad" sounds like "mayored" to me), so I think this
is getting off the point about 't' and 'd'.
"I'm the mayor of this here town."
"Well you'd better watch out - my horse is outside and he ain't seen a
mare in weeks!"
(from "Carry On Cowboy").
Mike Barnes
>I believe those who actually engage in horseback
>riding scorn the word "horseback" as superfluous?
I believe that British racing fans also disapprove of "horse racing".
--
Mike Barnes
Mike Barnes
>What'll you have?
>
>I like oysters.
>
>I like oyster Stew.
I just said I did, didn't I?
>We'll both have oysters.
--
Mike Barnes
Andy Averill
> right-hand turn and right-correct, and ink-pen (in some dialects), where
> we are apt to add another qualifying word for insurance. "Horseback
> riding" in this case. I believe those who actually engage in horseback
> riding scorn the word "horseback" as superfluous?
Don't forget "snow skiing" and "white milk".
Mark Barratt
>On 07 Apr 2001 21:23:52 GMT, gregp...@cs.comjunkless (GregParmele) wrote:
>
>>That was precisely why we started saying pissed off rather than mad but alas
>>the British already had an alternate meaning for pissed.
>
>Mad as in potty, or potty as in pissed in?
>Do Americans distinguish between "potty" and "party"?
>
>I think we already discussed (a few months ago) the continuing assimilation of
>ticked off into pissed off.
I don't think "assimilation" is the word you wanted, here.
Mark Barratt
This illustrates (I don't know if that was the intent) another pondian
pronunciation difference. The joke doesn't work for me because "stew"
(in RP) is /stIu/ and "too" is /tu/.
Maria Conlon
Steve Hayes wrote in message
>Do Americans distinguish between "potty" and "party"?
This American does (Midwest).
>I think we already discussed (a few months ago) the continuing
>assimilation of ticked off into pissed off.
"Pissed off" does seem to be growing in use, and "ticked off" seems to
be tapering off.
I personally do not like this trend and have taken some "heat" because
of my opinion. I think "pissed off" is coarse, unrefined; this is
probably because "piss" means "urinate" here. And I especially do not
like "pissed off" when said by women. Sexist though it may be, I am
inclined to give men a little more slack in the "word choice"
department.
Another likely reason I don't like the phrase is that "piss" was never
said in public situations or in mixed company when I was growing up
(1940s & '50s). So there is the lingering impression in my mind that
"piss" and "pissed off" are somewhat off-color.
I know it makes no sense, but I react more negatively to "piss/piss off"
than I do to "fuck" or its various forms.
Maria
Harvey V
<snip>
>"Pissed off" does seem to be growing in use, and "ticked off" seems to
>be tapering off.
>
>I personally do not like this trend and have taken some "heat" because
>of my opinion. I think "pissed off" is coarse, unrefined;
I'd agree with you there; it strikes me as a *lot* cruder than "ticked
off".
A rightpondian usage that also seems extremely crude to me is "he/it
really gets on my tits" for "really annoys me".
Has that one made it across the ocean?
Does it sound as crude to others as is does to me?
Harvey
Maria Conlon
Donna Richoux wrote in message
>"Writing" and "riding" are a pair that actually could theoretically
>cause confusion, because their grammatical role are similar enough.
Yes -- good pair. Your point about grammatical roles is key, I think.
>I don't ever remember being confused by them myself, but I think we've
>had one report where someone was, once.
>
>Can I invent a plausible example?
[snip plausible example which Donna provided]
I am reminded of our recent discussion of the Beatles' song "Ticket to
Ride." I always hear it as "ticket to Rye"; many people hear it as
"ticket to write."
"Being able to [write/ride] was very important in the days of the Pony
Express." ??? Nah. Being able to write remains important with any kind
of mail; the ability to ride does not. Donna's example was better. ("She
taught riding at a private academy." "She taught writing at a private
academy.")
Maria
R H Draney
>
> > That's the kind of situation, like funny-peculiar and funny-ha-ha, and
> > right-hand turn and right-correct, and ink-pen (in some dialects), where
> > we are apt to add another qualifying word for insurance. "Horseback
> > riding" in this case. I believe those who actually engage in horseback
> > riding scorn the word "horseback" as superfluous?
>
> Don't forget "snow skiing" and "white milk".
Acoustic guitar?...conventional oven?...analog clock?...Hank Williams
Sr?....r
--
"There was a fairly convincing tv show on fox last week"
- Dave Butner presents evidence that he's from an alternate universe
Maria Conlon
Andy Averill wrote in message
>Don't forget "snow skiing" and "white milk".
(Do you mean that "snow" and "white" are superfluous? Or are you asking
if some people *think* they are?)
Snow skiing...water skiing.
White milk...chocolate milk
White milk...buttermilk
White milk...sweet milk -- no, that's the same as white milk.
Maria
Joe Manfre
>man...@flash.net (Joe Manfre) wrote:
>No, "badder" is a word, alright, but don't you mean batsman?
>
Oh no, not another cricket thread.
>Seriously, though, "mad" and "mat" have different length vowels even
>for me (tho' Leftpondian "mad" sounds like "mayored" to me),
Yes, I think that's the "mad" I use. But there is another variety of
American pronunciation in which "mad" and "mat" seem to have the same
vowel.
>so I think this
>is getting off the point about 't' and 'd'.
Sure, but I've always enjoyed ref's posts in which he goes into
excruciating detail about his own peculiar usage and pronunciation, so
I thought I'd write one of my own.
Back on the subject of "t" and "d" -- though I said before that an /i/
before the "t" or "d" make them sound the same, it does depend on what
comes after the "t" or "d". An "en" after the "t" or "d" ruins the
effect: "Sweden" doesn't sound like "sweeten", for example.
Rafal 'Negrin' Lisowski
fragile balance of Nature by writing:
>Back on the subject of "t" and "d" -- though I said before that an /i/
>before the "t" or "d" make them sound the same, it does depend on what
>comes after the "t" or "d". An "en" after the "t" or "d" ruins the
>effect: "Sweden" doesn't sound like "sweeten", for example.
Well yes. I suppose <sweeten> _could_ be pronounced /'swi?n-/, whereas
<Sweden> could not. Or could it? Anyone?
ref
> On 8 Apr 2001 18:50:37 GMT, man...@flash.net (Joe Manfre) damaged the
> fragile balance of Nature by writing:
>
> >Back on the subject of "t" and "d" -- though I said before that an /i/
> >before the "t" or "d" make them sound the same, it does depend on what
> >comes after the "t" or "d". An "en" after the "t" or "d" ruins the
> >effect: "Sweden" doesn't sound like "sweeten", for example.
>
> Well yes. I suppose <sweeten> _could_ be pronounced /'swi?n-/, whereas
> <Sweden> could not. Or could it? Anyone?
I think it could in some particular regional dialect, perhaps a
Northeastern one, but in my Northeastern dialect "sweeten" and "Sweden"
are not homophones. There is some sort of glottal stop thing going on in
"sweeten", but I'm not sure what's going on in "Sweden" -- maybe just the
flappy thing. The phonetic difference isn't just in the vowel length.
On Joe's point, note that "Swede" and "sweet" are probably *not*
homophones for most Americans -- but the phonetic difference may be
primarily in the vowel length.
ref
> Mark Barratt (mark.b...@chello.be) wrote:
> >man...@flash.net (Joe Manfre) wrote:
>
> >Seriously, though, "mad" and "mat" have different length vowels even
> >for me (tho' Leftpondian "mad" sounds like "mayored" to me),
>
> Yes, I think that's the "mad" I use. But there is another variety of
> American pronunciation in which "mad" and "mat" seem to have the same
> vowel.
You probably have *my* variety[1] in mind, but in fact there is a phonetic
difference in my vowels in "mad" and "mat". See my recording of "Can a
cat man a catamaran" for some idea of the difference -- the "man" vowel is
more like what I use in "mad". Somewhere on the AUE website.
[1]Postwar Prestige Standard, Coastal Version, Northeastern Version, New
York City Version, 1970s Central Brooklyn with General 1980s Prestige New
York City Version, MINMINM.
ref
> Do Americans distinguish between "potty" and "party"?
Certainly the majority of speakers who are rhotic (over 75%?) would:
/pAti/ vs. /pArti/. I'm not sure if all non-rhotic speakers would
distinguish them, but I think at least some would based on either vowel
length, vowel quality, or both. For example, I know for certain that
non-rhotic Bostonians would say /pati/ ("party") but /pA.ti/ ("potty").
This is quite analogous to the RPian distinction. I'm not sure, but I
think at least some non-rhotic New Yorkers would have /pA:ti/ and /pAti/.
Maybe not.
Maria Conlon
Maria Conlon wrote in message
I just re-read your post and see now what you meant. So my response
above just adds support to the notion that qualifiers are needed in some
cases where they weren't needed in the past.
Maria
P. Schultz
> <...> An "en" after the "t" or "d" ruins the
> effect: "Sweden" doesn't sound like "sweeten", for example.
That's because the "t" is no longer followed by a vowel. The vowel
completely disappears, and the only thing articulated is a syllabic "n".
\\P. Schultz
Mark Barratt
I've always quite liked that one. I think 'tit' varies from being merely
informal to downright vulgar depending upon context and circumstance.
It's said to be an alternate spelling of 'teat', although to my mind the
two are separate words. 'Teat', in appropriate context, isn't vulgar at
all.
I've heard a variant as "...gets on my wick." which may be earlier than
the 'tits' version. I don't know what "wick" may have been, here, but I
suspect it has nothing to do with Hamptons. There is a tendency for such
expressions to be coarsened by the substitution of vulgar words: "gnat's
cock" for "gnat's whisker", for example.
Rafal 'Negrin' Lisowski
the fragile balance of Nature by writing:
>On Joe's point, note that "Swede" and "sweet" are probably *not*
>homophones for most Americans -- but the phonetic difference may be
>primarily in the vowel length.
Tes, you're right. It's mainly the difference in vowel length before
voiced and voiceless sounds. The final consonant is barely audible due
to the lack of plosion on most occasions.
Yet the reason why the vowel length may (or may not) be pretty much
the same when we add '-en' suffix is that the key factor here is the
order of phonological rules at work. Vowels are shortened before
voiceless consonants (or, if you will, lengthened before voiced ones),
while /*/ is voiced (most of the times - anyway, it is obviously
voiced in /'swi*n-/ or /'m&*R/). So if the flapping rule is applied
first, there will be no context for vowel shortening. Hence, <matter>
and <madder> (or whatever pair we're discussing) will be homophones.
If the words are derived in the opposite order (vowel shortening
applied first), we will end up with different vowel lenghts before the
same sound, that is before a flap. I've been told that this occurs in
the Canadian variety, but apparently it's also the case in
Northeastern US.
ref
> On 7 Apr 2001 23:58:39 GMT, man...@flash.net (Joe Manfre) damaged the
> fragile balance of Nature by writing:
>
> >I definitely use a different "a" in "matter" than in "madder", which I
> >believe ref already described accurately.
>
> Meaning a longer one in 'madder'? That is the thing I described as a
> rule of Canadian English? Or something different than that?
For me, the difference is more pronounced in "mad" and "mat", though it
*can* be present in "madder" and "matter" too. "Mad" has a slightly
longer vowel, at least sometimes, and the vowel itself is, in *my* case,
slightly more "raised" (closer to /E/) and diphthongized (moving towards
/E@/ but never really getting there). A lot of Northeastern-to-Midwestern
Americans, and maybe western ones too, use a more raised and diphthongized
vowel in "mad", and in the Northern Cities Region of western New England
to the Upper Midwest the raising and diphthongization is heard just as
much in "mat" as in "mad".
> Well, maybe you're right. Right now I'm listening to myself
> pronouncing 'matter' and 'madder' in as natural a way as possible (I
> could describe my pronuciation as approx. 80%-accurate East Coast
> American)
You *could*, but what does that mean? Okay, Northeast Coastal, but you
then have to specify Prestige or Traditionalist, Postwar or Prewar, and
you have to then specify the locality (and perhaps the neighborhood, in
the larger cities). And if you're using "East Coast" loosely to include
the Beginnings of the Inland Frontier, then all bets are off.
JessK...@aol.com
com> said:
>> That's the kind of situation, like funny-peculiar and funny-ha-ha, and
>> right-hand turn and right-correct, and ink-pen (in some dialects), where
>> we are apt to add another qualifying word for insurance. "Horseback
>> riding" in this case. I believe those who actually engage in horseback
>> riding scorn the word "horseback" as superfluous?
>
>Don't forget "snow skiing" and "white milk".
And don't forget that the name for this sort of formation is
"retronym."
Frances Kemmish
> > >rhoticism. Hmm... it's not that easy. The best I can come up with is
> > >'siting' and 'siding', but I'm not sure that the latter word is used in
> > >homophones?
> >
> > I think I pronounce "beating" and "beading" alike, unless I'm making
> > some particular effort to enunciate because I don't want to confuse
> > anyone. "Siting" and "siding" are quite different for me, though; I
> > don't think they have the same first "i". I'm pretty sure I open my
> > mouth more to pronounce the "i" in "side". In fact, I think the "t"
> > in "siting" is not pronounced as "d" by USAians, but more as a genuine
> > "t", which may be what makes the preceding vowels sound different from
> > each other. (I see that Evan Kirschenbaum's ASCII IPA chart uses both
> > "site" and "side" as examples of /aI/, even though as I said the
> > vowels don't sound the same to me...)
> >
> > "Beating"/"beading" is a good choice, though -- I think you hit the
> > nail on the head with that one.
> >
>
> "Writing" and "riding" are a pair that actually could theoretically
> don't ever remember being confused by them myself, but I think we've had
> one report where someone was, once.
>
> Can I invent a plausible example?
>
> She taught writing at a private academy.
>
> nothing about writing or riding in previous sentences, whether I would
> know what she teaches from that alone.
>
> That's the kind of situation, like funny-peculiar and funny-ha-ha, and
> right-hand turn and right-correct, and ink-pen (in some dialects), where
> we are apt to add another qualifying word for insurance. "Horseback
> riding" in this case. I believe those who actually engage in horseback
> riding scorn the word "horseback" as superfluous?
>
This reminds me of the time my son (then in First Grade) brought
home his picture of "George Washington Writing to a Fairy". We had
not lived in the USA very long, and his drawing was of the
minimalist genre, so it took some time to discover that he had
actually drawn "George Washington Riding to a Ferry".
Fran
ref
> I found a good pair earlier in the thread, so it's just a question of
> dreaming up a context:
>
> The sunlight glistened upon the sweat, beading upon her brow that
> afternoon.
>
> If you heard that, could you be sure that it was 'beading' and not
> 'beating'?
I don't think so, the way it'd ordinarily be said by an American.
Frances Kemmish
Or different qualifiers are needed in different regions: for
instance, in the UK, "hockey" usually means the game that is played
on grass, whereas, in the USA, it means the game played on ice, so
in the US you wouldn't generally hear "ice hockey", and, in the UK,
you don't hear "field hockey".
Fran
Michael Q.
>
> In article <drluctsse5cs1u6k0...@4ax.com>, Mark Barratt
> <mark.b...@chello.be> writes:
>
> > One of the most prominent features of American pronunciation, to my
> > British ear, and one which I don't remember being discussed at any
> > length here, is the assimilation of 't' to 'd' in certain words.
> >
> > I was thinking about this yesterday (Dutch has this phenomenon to an
> > even greater extent, and in both directions) when it occurred to me that
> > what I hear and what an American hear are not necessarily the same.
> >
> > The word 'matter', for example, I would expect to reach my ears as
> > 'madder' if spoken by an American. But the question is, does that mean
> > that Americans don't distinguish between these two words, or only that
> > my ear does not hear the distinction?
>
> You can't hear the distinction. In American, "matter" is pronounced with the
> same T-sound that you would use in, for example, "steak", where the British
> pronunciation uses the sound of T in "take". And "madder" would be
> pronounced rather the same way you pronounce it, though with an R sound at
> the end, of course.
>
In Ontario, "butter" is pronounced virtually exactly like "budder." I
don't hear any difference. Like "where" and "wear." (A few people blow
air out for "wh", but it's not that common. For a place name like
Whitby, you might here people pronounce it Hwitby.)
But there is a bit more of a "tt" sound in a sentence like, "What's the
matter?" Hmm. It's the verb, e.g. "This really matters." The "tt" is
there. It's not like "madder." The noun, as in, "Liquid is one of the
basic states of matter," would be identical to "madder." That's how I
hear it.
I once listened to a book-on-tape of Stephen Hawking's "Brief History
Of Time," and the reader pronounced all of the t's in a very explosive
manner, but also pronounced the r's so that they sounded like d's. So
"relativity" became, "Deh-deh-TIV-i-TEE".
Speaking of t's, people often joke that Torontonians pronounce their
city is "Toronna," which is true, but that is a common speech pattern in
parts of Ontario near Toronto. For example:
Bantam =ban'm
Momentum=muhmen'm
etc.
Some Brits seem to pronounce "tt" as a gutteral silence. As in "bu<stop
the breath for 0.1 seconds>er"
Another thing that is common in Ontario is to reverse "e" and "r" in
e.g. "Prescription." So it's said as, "perscription." This leads to
spelling errors. I once saw a van, seriously, that had painted on it,
"Percision Sign Painting." Quite ironic. It even goes so far as the time
I heard somebody say he was going for a "dirnk."
Here is another oddity about Toronto specifically.
Twenty years ago, when Toronto was still mainly people of UK or
European background, I noticed something re the word "schedule." The
city seemed divided down the middle on that, with the west end saying,
"skedjewul," and the east end saying "shedjewel" or even "shezhewul"
Michael
Michael Q.
>
> gregp...@cs.comjunkless (GregParmele) wrote:
>
> >That was precisely why we started saying pissed off rather than mad but alas
> >the British already had an alternate meaning for pissed.
>
> point here, anyway.
>
> >I think that the surrounding sounds being different in American and British
> >pronunciation are what cause the differences in stress, ie: the final 'er' in
> >matter.
>
> OK, so I find a minimal pair that doesn't have the complication of
> rhoticism. Hmm... it's not that easy. The best I can come up with is
> 'siting' and 'siding', but I'm not sure that the latter word is used in
> the US. Ah, how about 'beating' and 'beading'? Are these words
> homophones?
In Ontario, single t's are pronounced as t's. "Beating" is not the same
as "beading."
"Solid footing," has a definite t.
Oddly, "putting," as in, "I am putting this away," sounds almost the
same as "pudding," whereas in, "Dad is puttering around in the
workshop," the "tt" is hard.
Re a golfer practicing "putting," I can't tell. I think the "tt" is
hard, but the club, the "putter," might ryhme with "rudder."
Michael
Michael Q.
>
> Maria Conlon wrote:
>
> > I can't think of a pair of example words that would actually be confused
> > with each other (when used in context) even if the "t" *does* sound like
> > a "d."
>
> If you asked, "Should I bring the ladder, or the step-stool?", and your
> American co-worker replied, "Bring the latter.", you still wouldn't know
> which to bring.
>
Technically true, but it would be so unlikely that a person would use
the word "latter" in that context that he'd have a 99.9% chance of being
correct by bringing the ladder.
Michael
Michael Q.
>
> On Sat, 07 Apr 2001 18:19:39 GMT, Mark Barratt
> <mark.b...@chello.be> damaged the fragile balance of Nature by
> writing:
>
> >British ear, and one which I don't remember being discussed at any
> >length here, is the assimilation of 't' to 'd' in certain words.
>
> group, so hello everybody!).
Hi! What an excellent and informative post.
> In Canadian English, however, there will be some difference in vowel
> length. The length of the /&/ sound in <madder> will be analogous to
> that in <bag>, compared with a shorter sound in <matter> and <back>.
I've never noticed that before, but yes, this is true. e.g. the "a" is
longer in duration in "bag" than in "bat."
Michael
Spehro Pefhany
> Andy Averill wrote:
>>
>> > That's the kind of situation, like funny-peculiar and funny-ha-ha, and
>> > right-hand turn and right-correct, and ink-pen (in some dialects), where
>> > we are apt to add another qualifying word for insurance. "Horseback
>> > riding" in this case. I believe those who actually engage in horseback
>> > riding scorn the word "horseback" as superfluous?
>>
>> Don't forget "snow skiing" and "white milk".
> Acoustic guitar?...conventional oven?...analog clock?...Hank Williams
> Sr?....r
Hot tea.
Best regards,
--
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=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Joe Manfre
>On Sun, 8 Apr 2001, Rafal 'Negrin' Lisowski wrote:
>
>> On 7 Apr 2001 23:58:39 GMT, man...@flash.net (Joe Manfre) damaged the
>> fragile balance of Nature by writing:
>>
>> >I definitely use a different "a" in "matter" than in "madder", which I
>> >believe ref already described accurately.
>>
>> Meaning a longer one in 'madder'? That is the thing I described as a
>> rule of Canadian English? Or something different than that?
>
>For me, the difference is more pronounced in "mad" and "mat", though it
>*can* be present in "madder" and "matter" too. "Mad" has a slightly
>longer vowel, at least sometimes, and the vowel itself is, in *my* case,
>slightly more "raised" (closer to /E/) and diphthongized (moving towards
>/E@/ but never really getting there).
See, that sounds like my diphthongy "mad" vowel that I was trying to
describe before, though as I said I think mine is a little closer to
/eI@/ than /E@/ ... I think. I grew up in Baltimore, and though I
don't have a thick version of what has been called the "Baltimore
accent" (which some of my family members do have), I do have something
of the vowel-twist that is said to characterize the "Upper
Chesapeake" region.
This vowel-twisting in my speech seems to be more noticeable to others
than I think it is. A few months ago I went to New York City and had
dinner with some people I know from another newsgroup, and later, one
of the people who'd dined with me posted this to the newsgroup:
Joe Manfre sounds like a normal guy, but has a peculiar
mid-Atlantic accent that sounds like he's trying to fit some
dipthongs into words like "cone" and "Kibo".
(Just for the record, I do *not* live in the middle of the Atlantic
ocean.)
At any rate, ref, I have a feeling that I'd pronounce "can a cat man a
catamaran" similarly to the way you do, though I need to scare up a
copy of your recording thereof so I can check. (Do you pronounce
"and" and "end" pretty much the same too?)
>You *could*, but what does that mean? Okay, Northeast Coastal, but
>you then have to specify Prestige or Traditionalist, Postwar or
>Prewar, and you have to then specify the locality (and perhaps the
>neighborhood, in the larger cities).
Say, ref, where can I learn more about this terminology? I'm new
around a.u.e, as you've noticed.
JM
--
"Sorry, Mr. Cox had nothing to do with this. I forgot to remove his
head." -- Satchi, in message <3ABD0317...@mindspring.com>
ref
> If I were to get madder and madder, it still would not matter. Still not
> confusing.
I just said this sentence, and the "madder" and "matter" are distinct to
me, because of the vowel (the phonetic realization of /&/ differs), and
this is not a case where I believe I am forcing an unnatural difference.
The /&/ of "madder" is higher, also a bit longer, mouth open a bit
wider; the /&/ of "matter" is lower.
ref
> I am obviously not American but Polish (moreover, I'm new to the
> group, so hello everybody!). However I'm a student at the English
> Institute of Warsaw University, so I can give you some phonetic
> theoretical info about this.
>
> As some already mentioned, this sound is called a tap (or a flap -
> actually, that's how I tend to call it). The difference between this
> and /d/ is that in a flap, the tip of the tongue makes contact with
> the alveolar ridge for a very short moment, so that there's no time
> for the air pressure to build up and, as a cosequence, there's no
> plosion.
>
> The context for the appearance of a flap is between a vowel and a
> syllabic segment (a vowel or a syllabic consonant). When inside a
> word, the latter must be unstressed for a flap to appear (as in
> <matter>). It may be either stressed or unstressed when the context
> appears across word boundaries (hence both <t>'s in <eat it all> will
> be flaps).
>
> There is absolutely no difference between <matter> and <madder> in
> AmE, even if speakers believe there is (speakers tend to perceive
> difference where there are none and vice verca). Americans in here
> could ask someone to pronunce both words several times in random
> order, while you try to write down what you think they say - and then
> check the accuracy of your guesses (of couse this other person must
> keep record of what she's saying, too).
This is not true. Skitt posted an example sentence in which I believe I
use different (phonetic) vowels in "matter" and "madder" (and in which he
implied that he'd use distinct vowels too, and he learned to speak
English on the opposite coast). If I could get my microphone to work I'd
make a recording and ship it off to you (or AUE's Bob Cunningham), but
alas, I don't know what's wrong with it.
America is a huge country, with a great deal of accent variation. You can
make some generalizations, but this is not one of them.
If you want to get some idea of the difference, find my recording of "Can
a cat man a catamaran" on the AUE website. The vowel I use in "matter" is
more like that of "cat", while what I use in "mad" and "madder" is like
what I use in "man". I don't really know from IPA but I'd clumsily
represent the difference as [&] and [&^:] where by [^] I mean some degree
of vowel-raising (towards [E] in this case).
Donna Richoux
Yes, and that heads back to where I started. I didn't say that people
call it "horseback riding" to distinguish it from bicycle riding or some
modern change. I said the "horseback" helps distinguish from "writing".
A distinction between two homophones -- which problem does not exist for
British speakers, and probably didn't exist for older American dialects
because I think they aspirated the t.
Retronyms are something else. As I said, this is like saying
"funny-peculiar" and "funny-ha-ha." Appending a lexical clarifier, or
something.
"Can I borrow a pin?"
"A straight pin or an ink-pin?"
"An ink-pin."
--
Best --- Donna Richoux
GrapeApe
>>
>>I like oysters.
>>
>>I like oyster Stew.
>>
>>We'll both have oysters.
>
>This illustrates (I don't know if that was the intent) another pondian
>pronunciation difference. The joke doesn't work for me because "stew"
>(in RP) is /stIu/ and "too" is /tu/.
So it should serve as a handle on speaking merkin. (Although many merkins will
say styoo as well, this bit relies on stoo.
The stoodent prepared his class skedjil.
The styudent prepared his class shed gyool. (Shed Duel)
Maria Conlon
Donna Richoux wrote in message
>Retronyms are something else. As I said, this is like saying
>"funny-peculiar" and "funny-ha-ha." Appending a lexical clarifier, or
>something.
>
>"Can I borrow a pin?"
>"A straight pin or an ink-pin?"
>"An ink-pin."
And what is an "ink-pin"?
I'm picturing a novel piece of jewelry that is pinned onto your blouse
and that could drip ink onto your blouse if you're not careful...
Maria
Donna Richoux
ref
Interesting. I wonder what sort of diphthongization this is (what I'm
imagining is something similar to the RP /@U/, which you do hear to a
greater or lesser degree in many American accents).
> At any rate, ref, I have a feeling that I'd pronounce "can a cat man a
> catamaran" similarly to the way you do, though I need to scare up a
> copy of your recording thereof so I can check.
It's at
http://www.alt-usage-english.org/rf_cat_man.wav
AUE's Bob Cunningham says the same sentence at
http://www.alt-usage-english.org/can_a_cat_man.wav
The only thing I can really comment on in Bob's is that his vowel in the
first syllable of "Catamaran" is not nearly as different from the vowel he
uses in the last syllable as mine are.
> (Do you pronounce
> "and" and "end" pretty much the same too?)
No, I don't think so. Certainly in isolation, fully stressed, the vowels
are distinct. "And" is like the vowel in "man"/"mad"/"madder", and "end"
has the ordinary /E/ vowel. The vowel of "and" is about halfway between
"at" and "end", in my case. The vowel in "and" is longer than that in
"end", at any rate. Of course, ordinarily I will often pronounce "and"
like [n-] or something like that.
> >You *could*, but what does that mean? Okay, Northeast Coastal, but
> >you then have to specify Prestige or Traditionalist, Postwar or
> >Prewar, and you have to then specify the locality (and perhaps the
> >neighborhood, in the larger cities).
>
> Say, ref, where can I learn more about this terminology? I'm new
> around a.u.e, as you've noticed.
I make it up as I go along, to tell you the truth, but I keep trying to
refine it. "Postwar" and "Prewar" refer to World War II. I'm not sure
any later war (in particular the Vietnam conflict) is as linguistically
significant for American speech, though maybe someday the Gulf War will
prove to be so. For example, Female Throat Creak begins
to be noticeable in the speech of American women about my age (early 30s)
with Not Too Traditionalist accents, but the Vietnam War was very far from
over when I was born, less than a year after the My Lai Massacre.
By "Traditionalist" I mean "Strong retention of features very closely
associated with traditional regional accents". I use "Prestige" to refer
to relatively cosmopolitan, refined or educated-sounding American accents
that are characterized by an attenuation of strongly identifiable regional
features; such accents tend to be hard to distinguish from one another
(even when there are important differences, such as on the cot/caught
matter) even by careful listeners. I'm the first to admit that this
nomenclature is unsatisfactory. I have tentatively decided that you have
to put west-coast and east-coast Postwar Prestige accents in a single
group (which must, of course, be further subdivided) that does not contain
Prestige accents from the Midwest, South, or other Non-coastal Regions.
I think the professional Dialectologists and Phoneticists who study
American pronunciation would consider all of this to be heresy, lunacy,
politically incorrect, or a combination thereof. But how many of them can
distinguish Prestige Californian from Prestige Northeastern? I rest my
case.
Let's not get caught up in the question of whether Maryland is (still) in
the South.
webm...@alt.usage.english.org
<snip>
>If you want to get some idea of the difference, find my recording of "Can
>a cat man a catamaran" on the AUE website.
N.Mitchum
-----
>
> I'm picturing a novel piece of jewelry that is pinned onto your blouse
> and that could drip ink onto your blouse if you're not careful...
Saves you the trouble of buying a pen or needing a pocket for it.
----NM
GrapeApe
>refine it. "Postwar" and "Prewar" refer to World War II.
I am constanly confused and have to seek further context, when someone refers
to "the Great War". I think most commonly this refers to WWI, although I have
certainly heard it used to refer to WWII (as opposed to say the Korean war),
and given the region in which I was raised, the Civil War as well. (Hey
Stonewall, its over you lost)
Joe Manfre
>On 8 Apr 2001, Joe Manfre wrote:
>> This vowel-twisting in my speech seems to be more noticeable to others
>> than I think it is. A few months ago I went to New York City and had
>> dinner with some people I know from another newsgroup, and later, one
>> of the people who'd dined with me posted this to the newsgroup:
>>
>> Joe Manfre sounds like a normal guy, but has a peculiar
>> mid-Atlantic accent that sounds like he's trying to fit some
>> dipthongs into words like "cone" and "Kibo".
>>
>> (Just for the record, I do *not* live in the middle of the Atlantic
>> ocean.)
>
>Interesting. I wonder what sort of diphthongization this is (what I'm
>imagining is something similar to the RP /@U/, which you do hear to a
>greater or lesser degree in many American accents).
Probably something like that; I don't think it's particularly heavy in
my speech, but it may come across more when I'm speaking with
emphasis, such as when I'm trying to talk over a crowd of people at a
long dinner table at a little restaurant in the East Village.
But! I must report that the following linguistic-errific page seems
to address the different short-a sounds that separate "matter" from
"madder" for us:
http://www.ling.upenn.edu/phono_atlas/Atlas_chapters/Ch11/Ch11.html
Here's a relevant portion:
-> 11.2.1. The Mid-Atlantic region
->
-> The first area to be separated from the Midland is the
-> Mid-Atlantic region. The Telsur interviews identify a unique, sharply
-> defined dialect that is termed "Mid-Atlantic" on Map 11.2. From
-> lexical evidence and settlement history, Philadelphia belongs in the
-> Midland and New York City in the North.. However, current
-> phonological developments adjoin New York City to Trenton,
-> Philadelphia, Reading, Wilmington and Baltimore. This Mid-Atlantic
-> region is defined by the split of the historical short a class into
-> two discrete categories, tense /æh/ and lax /æ/ (Trager 1930, 1934,
-> 1949, Ferguson 1975, Labov 1989), The tense member becomes raised,
-> fronted, lengthened and develops an inglide; the lax member remains
-> as a short low front vowel [æ]. Whether this is considered a lexically
-> conditioned rule or a phonemic split, it is characterized by
-> grammatical conditioning (the effects of auxiliary status,
-> inflectional and derivational morphology), complex phonetic
-> conditioning with unpredictable sub-types, variability of proper names
-> and abbreviations, lexical exceptions and the special behavior of
-> learned and affective words. For example, the Philadelphia
-> population shows nearly 100% agreement in the following core
-> distribution of short a words (Labov 1989):
->
-> short a is tense in closed syllables before nasals (man, fan,
-> stand, Dan, etc.) with the exception of irregular verbs (ran,
-> swam, began) and tense before voiceless fricatives (pass, fast,
-> path, laugh, etc.) but lax in all open syllables (hammer,
-> passage) unless the second syllable is an inflectional suffix
-> where the vowel is tense (passing, laughing), and tense before
-> /d/ in three words mad, bad, glad but lax in all other words
-> before /d/ and lax before learned words like alas and wrath.
It goes on from there. The page also addresses the cot/caught merger
in several places, although it has an irritating scientific detachment
about it, rather than damning those heathens who think "cot" and
"caught" are pronounced alike. Also, I don't quite get these people
who think "writing" and "riding" are homophones, either.
>I make it up as I go along, to tell you the truth, but I keep trying
>to refine it. "Postwar" and "Prewar" refer to World War II. I'm not
>sure any later war (in particular the Vietnam conflict) is as
>linguistically significant for American speech, though maybe someday
>the Gulf War will prove to be so. For example, Female Throat Creak
>begins to be noticeable in the speech of American women about my age
>(early 30s) with Not Too Traditionalist accents, but the Vietnam War
>was very far from over when I was born, less than a year after the My
>Lai Massacre.
Female Throat Creak. I think I can imagine that without even having
to have it described.
>By "Traditionalist" I mean "Strong retention of features very closely
>associated with traditional regional accents". I use "Prestige" to
>refer to relatively cosmopolitan, refined or educated-sounding
>American accents that are characterized by an attenuation of strongly
>identifiable regional features; such accents tend to be hard to
>distinguish from one another (even when there are important
>differences, such as on the cot/caught matter) even by careful
>listeners.
I think that during my college years my accent became more and more
prestige-ish, but lately I've been making a marked effort to retain
some of my oddball pronunciations rather than giving in and talking
just like those people on the teevee do.
I've been searching around on the Web to find a learned description of
what the Baltimore accent sounds like -- I've seen scholarly
linguistic write-ups on the subject before -- but I've only been able
to find these joke lists of Baltimoron pronunciations:
http://www.best.com/~zorak/stuff/bawlamarese.html
http://home.flash.net/~manfre/usenet/balmer.txt
I don't exactly talk like what's described in those lists, but I grew
up listening to people talk like that, so it's had its effect on my
own accent, such as it is.
>Let's not get caught up in the question of whether Maryland is
>(still) in the South.
Anyone who tells me I'm from the South gets a punch in the snoot!
Honestly, some people say that since Maryland's a border state, some
of its residents speak with a combination of the elongated vowels of
the South and the dropped consonants of the North. I like to say I
come from a part of the world where many syllables and most consonants
are optional.
ref
I understand "the Great War" to mean World War I, always.
ref
Very interesting. I don't think I read this passage before. In my case,
I use the "higher /&/" in man, fan, stand, Dan, but also ran, (maybe)
swam. But in "began" I seem to be using something more like the lower
"cat" /&/. So I don't exactly rhyme "began" and "man". The "hammer" and
"passage" /&/ is also more like that heard in "cat". "Hammer" (tool) and
"hammer" (if it were a word meaning "one who hams") would be pronounced
differently. Thinking more about this, I'd say that maybe I do use the
lower vowel in "swam". So this description of the
Philadelphia Mid-Atlantic accent does seem to bear some relation to my
own.
> It goes on from there. The page also addresses the cot/caught merger
> in several places, although it has an irritating scientific detachment
> about it, rather than damning those heathens who think "cot" and
> "caught" are pronounced alike.
Yes, that's the troubling thing about these Professionals. No moral
component at all.
> Also, I don't quite get these people
> who think "writing" and "riding" are homophones, either.
>
>
> >I make it up as I go along, to tell you the truth, but I keep trying
> >to refine it. "Postwar" and "Prewar" refer to World War II. I'm not
> >sure any later war (in particular the Vietnam conflict) is as
> >linguistically significant for American speech, though maybe someday
> >the Gulf War will prove to be so. For example, Female Throat Creak
> >begins to be noticeable in the speech of American women about my age
> >(early 30s) with Not Too Traditionalist accents, but the Vietnam War
> >was very far from over when I was born, less than a year after the My
> >Lai Massacre.
>
> Female Throat Creak. I think I can imagine that without even having
> to have it described.
If you need a real example of Contemporary Female Throat Creak, there's
always the TV commercial for the contraceptive pill (with anti-acne
effects) ortho-tri-cyclen, which can be viewed at:
http://www.orthotricyclen.com/video/commercialvivo.htm
in VIVO format (the mpeg file didn't work for me). The creak is
particularly noticeable in the speech of the woman with the short reddish
hair. Note the Prestige-ish, or at least Non-Traditionalist, nature of
their accents. There are some unconfirmed reports that Contemporary Female
Throat Creak has been spread to the Male population.
I'm on the lookout for other such recorded examples of Throat Creak. This
subject seems to have been completely overlooked by the ever-clueless
Linguistics Community (after all, wouldn't a Google search uncover
something about it otherwise?). There are some interesting
sociolinguistic and historical-linguistics issues here. How did this
Throat Creak originate? Does it serve to distinguish one social class, or
generational group, from another? How extensive is it, regionally and
age-wise?
> >By "Traditionalist" I mean "Strong retention of features very closely
> >associated with traditional regional accents". I use "Prestige" to
> >refer to relatively cosmopolitan, refined or educated-sounding
> >American accents that are characterized by an attenuation of strongly
> >identifiable regional features; such accents tend to be hard to
> >distinguish from one another (even when there are important
> >differences, such as on the cot/caught matter) even by careful
> >listeners.
>
> I think that during my college years my accent became more and more
> prestige-ish, but lately I've been making a marked effort to retain
> some of my oddball pronunciations rather than giving in and talking
> just like those people on the teevee do.
I am doing the same. I caught (not cot) myself pronouncing "mirror"
incorrectly the other day (so as to rhyme with "nearer"). It won't happen
again. I've reestablished my pronunciation of "vanilla" as "vanella".
I'm waiting for an example to pronounce "bogeyman" as "boogieman" (or are
these really different words?).[1]
> I've been searching around on the Web to find a learned description of
> what the Baltimore accent sounds like -- I've seen scholarly
> linguistic write-ups on the subject before -- but I've only been able
> to find these joke lists of Baltimoron pronunciations:
>
> http://www.best.com/~zorak/stuff/bawlamarese.html
> http://home.flash.net/~manfre/usenet/balmer.txt
>
> I don't exactly talk like what's described in those lists, but I grew
> up listening to people talk like that, so it's had its effect on my
> own accent, such as it is.
I've only seen joke-treatments of the Baltimore accent, unfortunately.
One radio personality in New York used to make fun of Spiro (Spehro?)
Agnew's pronunciation of "film", but I don't know if it was a fair
treatment. It made me briefly wonder whether Baltimore played a role in
the formation of certain aspects of certain varieties of Postwar Prestige
Accents. I used to watch _Homicide: Life on the Street_ and I've
seen _Diner_, but I don't know that either one was particularly authentic
accentwise.
> >Let's not get caught up in the question of whether Maryland is
> >(still) in the South.
>
> Anyone who tells me I'm from the South gets a punch in the snoot!
> Honestly, some people say that since Maryland's a border state, some
> of its residents speak with a combination of the elongated vowels of
> the South and the dropped consonants of the North. I like to say I
> come from a part of the world where many syllables and most consonants
> are optional.
It's a difficult issue from my own perspective as a Northeasterner (and a
Northeast Coast-er to boot[2]) since I'm the one making up all these terms
and classifications. I can tell you that I don't really think of Maryland
as part of the South, and, as I've said before, I believe it has won at
least honorary membership in the Northeast. Maybe it's sort of like
including Chile in NAFTA, though.
[1]Regarding "bogeyman": M-W gives as the date 1890 and gives several
pronunciations: in ASCII IPA, /bUgim&n/ (this is what was used in ALL the
traditional New York City accents), /boUgim&n/, /bugim&n/, and, oddly,
/bUgRm&n/ (which sounds as if it contains the word "booger"[1a], not to be
confused with the completely non-North-American "bugger"). The
definitions are:
1 : a monstrous imaginary figure used in threatening children
2 : a terrifying or dreaded person or thing : BUGBEAR
My inclination would be to say that 1 should be pronounced "boogieman" and
2 should be "bogey-man".
[1a]According to M-W:
Main Entry: booger
Pronunciation: 'bu-g&r, 'b-
Function: noun
Etymology: alteration of English dialect buggard, boggart, from 1bug +
-ard
Date: 1866
1 : BOGEYMAN
2 : a piece of dried nasal mucus
[2]Indeed, having lived for experimental purposes in an Inland Area of
Connecticut[3] for several months, I no longer believe there is any
significant cultural connection between the People of the Northeast
Coastal Regions and the People of the Northeast Western Frontier. Other
than the whole American thing, of course. The Midwest begins at ... well,
maybe twenty miles or so inland of the Atlantic Coast. The people here
sound like they're from ...well, Michigan (I lived in Professor Lawler's
town for a few years).
[3]West of the Connecticut River, which also might serve to mark the
beginning of the American Midwest.
Ann Burlingham
> I understand "the Great War" to mean World War I, always.
WWII being "the Good War."
--
Ann Burlingham <an...@concentric.net>
wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world
my blood approves -- e. e. cummings
Steve Hayes
wrote:
>>"Pissed off" does seem to be growing in use, and "ticked off" seems to
>>be tapering off.
>>
>>I personally do not like this trend and have taken some "heat" because
>>of my opinion. I think "pissed off" is coarse, unrefined;
>
>I'd agree with you there; it strikes me as a *lot* cruder than "ticked
>off".
But I still think that "tick off" meands "rebuke".
Steve Hayes
http://www.suite101.com/myhome.cfm/methodius
Matti Lamprhey
> ref wrote:
>
> > I understand "the Great War" to mean World War I, always.
>
> WWII being "the Good War."
The 1914-18 war was The War To End All Wars.
The 1939-45 war was the same with "II" at the end.
Matti
Matthew M. Huntbach
> >OK, so I find a minimal pair that doesn't have the complication of
> >rhoticism. Hmm... it's not that easy. The best I can come up with is
> >'siting' and 'siding', but I'm not sure that the latter word is used in
> >the US. Ah, how about 'beating' and 'beading'? Are these words
> >homophones?
> I think I pronounce "beating" and "beading" alike, unless I'm making
> some particular effort to enunciate because I don't want to confuse
> anyone. "Siting" and "siding" are quite different for me, though; I
> don't think they have the same first "i".
What about "wedding" and "wetting"?
Matthew Huntbach
ref
> What about "wedding" and "wetting"?
It seems that I pronounce these alike, though I don't conceive of them as
homophones.
GrapeApe
>> >begins to be noticeable in the speech of American women about my age
>> >(early 30s) with Not Too Traditionalist accents, but the
>> Female Throat Creak. I think I can imagine that without even having
>> to have it described.
I think I can imagine it in many females younger than thirty as well.
ref
Yes. The interesting question is: how old is the oldest exhibitress
of Throat Creak?
Stephen Toogood
<tr...@euronet.nl> writes
>
>Yes, and that heads back to where I started. I didn't say that people
>call it "horseback riding" to distinguish it from bicycle riding or some
>modern change. I said the "horseback" helps distinguish from "writing".
>A distinction between two homophones -- which problem does not exist for
>British speakers, and probably didn't exist for older American dialects
>because I think they aspirated the t.
>
types who owned horses, and there were certain other types who owned
bicycles.
Saying 'horse riding' (it wouldn't have been 'horseback riding' here)
was a solecism because it admitted the possibility that you might own a
bicycle. That I know is an oversimplification, but bear in mind that
we're talking about the 1880s et seq., a very class-conscious era,
partly because of the abundance of 'new money'.
Curiously, the answer 'on horseback' to the question 'how is he
travelling' seems to have been quite OK with the same people, possibly
because the alternative was 'by carriage'.
--
Stephen Toogood
John Holmes
"Joe Manfre" <man...@flash.net> wrote in message
news:9ao9je$65p0m$2...@ID-81441.news.dfncis.de...
>
> I definitely use a different "a" in "matter" than in "madder", which I
> believe ref already described accurately.
Do you use the same 'a' in madder=the colour as in madder=more mad, or
is it like the 'a' in matter?
--
Regards,
John.
Donna Richoux
>Also, I don't quite get these people
> who think "writing" and "riding" are homophones, either.
What's not to get? Do you mean you don't understand us, you don't know
which sound we mean (the "riding" one), you don't believe us (whaddya
mean, we "think"?), you don't approve of us, what?
In case anyone is puzzled, may I say that those of us who pronounce a t
between two vowels as a d are actually quite *capable* of pronouncing it
as an aspirated t. This is not one of those "van Gogh" things where a
sound is outside our normal range. All I have to do to say "writing" in
the punchy-t way is to think of it as two words:
Wry Ting
I just don't, usually. (But I think, after living abroad, I do hit my
t's harder than back home.)
People are mentioning other examples, so I should throw in "metal,
medal, meddle" and "petal, pedal, peddle." A dictionary (M-W?) gave
these as typically homophones in US English and not in UK English.
--
Donna Richoux
(An American living in the Netherlands)
Jacqui
> This reminds me of the time my son (then in First Grade) brought
> home his picture of "George Washington Writing to a Fairy". We had
> not lived in the USA very long, and his drawing was of the
> minimalist genre, so it took some time to discover that he had
> actually drawn "George Washington Riding to a Ferry".
Oh, I SO prefer his version! ;)
Jac
Jacqui
>
> I've heard a variant as "...gets on my wick." which may be earlier than
> the 'tits' version. I don't know what "wick" may have been, here, but I
> suspect it has nothing to do with Hamptons. There is a tendency for such
> expressions to be coarsened by the substitution of vulgar words: "gnat's
> cock" for "gnat's whisker", for example.
Which reminds me of one that puzzled me for a while - "I am a natz
upset". Took me ages to figure out that it was "gnat's (breath/whisker)"
as in 'very very small amount'. A *teensy* bit upset, if you like.
Jac
Jacqui
> Ann Burlingham wrote...
> > ref wrote:
> >
> > > I understand "the Great War" to mean World War I, always.
> >
> > WWII being "the Good War."
>
> The 1914-18 war was The War To End All Wars.
>
> The 1939-45 war was the same with "II" at the end.
A sequel, since the [insert joke of choice, the US often a favourite
target for this one] got there late for the first one.
I still remember from a History class c.1985 seeing a cartoon drawn in
1919 (for 'Punch'? possibly) making some point about the War only having
ended since they'd run out of men to kill - "wait until their children
are all 21 and we'll have another bash". 1918-1939=21...
Jac
Harvey V
<3AD1B3C9...@mireille1.freeserve.co.uk>:
<snip>
>
>Which reminds me of one that puzzled me for a while - "I am a natz
>upset". Took me ages to figure out that it was "gnat's
>(breath/whisker)" as in 'very very small amount'. A *teensy* bit upset,
>if you like.
I'm certain I've also heard the cruder "gnat's fart" -- often as "a gnat's
fart in a tornado" -- used as a description of ineffectiveness.
Harvey
Harvey V
<3AD1B491...@mireille1.freeserve.co.uk>:
<snip>
>
>I still remember from a History class c.1985 seeing a cartoon drawn in
>1919 (for 'Punch'? possibly) making some point about the War only having
>ended since they'd run out of men to kill - "wait until their children
>are all 21 and we'll have another bash". 1918-1939=21...
I suspect that future historians won't view them as two wars at all, but
more like the Thirty Years' War and the Hundred Years' War: a continuing
conflict which had an interim period of uneasy peace.
Harvey
Joe Manfre
>On 9 Apr 2001, Joe Manfre wrote:
>> -> For example, the Philadelphia
>> -> population shows nearly 100% agreement in the following core
>> -> distribution of short a words (Labov 1989): ->
>> -> short a is tense in closed syllables before nasals (man, fan,
>> -> stand, Dan, etc.) with the exception of irregular verbs (ran,
>> -> swam, began) and tense before voiceless fricatives (pass, fast,
>> -> path, laugh, etc.) but lax in all open syllables (hammer,
>> -> passage) unless the second syllable is an inflectional suffix
>> -> where the vowel is tense (passing, laughing), and tense before
>> -> /d/ in three words mad, bad, glad but lax in all other words
>> -> before /d/ and lax before learned words like alas and wrath.
>
>Very interesting. I don't think I read this passage before. In my case,
>I use the "higher /&/" in man, fan, stand, Dan, but also ran, (maybe)
>swam. But in "began" I seem to be using something more like the lower
>"cat" /&/. So I don't exactly rhyme "began" and "man".
Me neither. I think that description is more or less spot-on for me,
except like you I use the tense /&/ in ran.
I had to reread that rather convoluted quote from Labov a few times to
sort out all the "but ... unless ... but" stuff that seems to be creating
double negatives or something.
> The "hammer" and
>"passage" /&/ is also more like that heard in "cat".
Same here, although "ham" and "pass" both have the tense /&/ of
"man". As I was saying elsewhere, pronouncing a tense /&/ seems
to involve a smile-like upward curl of the sides of the mouth,
along with the tension.
>Thinking more about this, I'd say that maybe I do use the
>lower vowel in "swam".
My "swam" vowel is lax as in "cat", but some of the Baltimorons in
my family seem to use the tense /&/ in "swam" instead.
>> It goes on from there. The page also addresses the cot/caught merger
>> in several places, although it has an irritating scientific detachment
>> about it, rather than damning those heathens who think "cot" and
>> "caught" are pronounced alike.
>
>Yes, that's the troubling thing about these Professionals. No moral
>component at all.
I have a feeling that the matter of the "matter/madder merger" is
going to become an obsession for me on the order of your focus on
"cot/caught". I'm thinking perhaps some new recordings are in order.
"The `Mad Hatter' matter made Alice madder."
>> I think that during my college years my accent became more and more
>> prestige-ish, but lately I've been making a marked effort to retain
>> some of my oddball pronunciations rather than giving in and talking
>> just like those people on the teevee do.
>
>I am doing the same. I caught (not cot) myself pronouncing "mirror"
>incorrectly the other day (so as to rhyme with "nearer").
Where I come from, "mirror" has only one syllable and it rhymes with
"near". Although some older people seem to say something like
"MEER-uh", kind of like the Spanish "mira" except with an American-
style "r" rather than that Spanish tooth-tapping "r" that always sounds
like a "d" to me.
One of the characteristic elements of the Baltimore speaking style is
the dropping of unaccented vowels at the ends of words. Maybe what
started out as "MEER-uh" turned into "meer" that way.
>I've reestablished my pronunciation of "vanilla" as "vanella".
>I'm waiting for an example to pronounce "bogeyman" as "boogieman" (or are
>these really different words?).[1]
I grew up saying "vanella" and "boogieman" too; the first time I saw
"bogeyman" in writing, it truly vexed me.
One person I've seen on teevee talking about the "boogieman" is
Jim Breuer, a stand-up comic who used to be on "Saturday Night Live".
He might be best remembered for his impression of Joe Pesci on "SNL".
About every other week, Comedy Central reruns this one stand-up special
in which Breuer does this bit about driving on a remote highway across
Florida swampland and being terrified that the boogieman is going to
jump out and get him. Not only does he say "boogie", but the "man"
has a noticeably tense /&/. (According to the Internet Movie Database,
Jim Breuer is from Long Island -- Valley Stream, to be precise.)
>I've only seen joke-treatments of the Baltimore accent, unfortunately.
>One radio personality in New York used to make fun of Spiro (Spehro?)
>Agnew's pronunciation of "film", but I don't know if it was a fair
>treatment.
What the joke treatments don't capture is the vowel shift that really
characterizes the accent. Particularly the /oU/ that is voiced as
a very quick diphthong that starts somewhere around /eI/ and ends
somewhere around a normal /oU/. I didn't think I had much of that
/oU/ in my speech until I saw the post that I quoted before in which
I was described as inserting diphthongs into the word "cone". In the
two joke-pronunciation lists whose URLs I gave, only a few of the
entries really try to express the diphthongized vowels of Baltimore
speech, such as "druckstewer" for "drugstore", "owen" for "on", and
"phane" for "phone".
If you read those joke lists without being aware of the vowel shifts,
you might come away with the inaccurate impression that Baltimorese
is close to a standard Hollywoodish Southern accent. I think it sounds
more like that Chicago accent that was mocked by those "da Bears!" guys
on "Saturday Night Live". There's also the matter of hardening the /s/
into something like a /z/, which the joke lists note in giving "zinc"
as the pronunciation for "sink".
The diphthongs, the tense /&/, the /s/-turned-/z/, and the dropping of
an unaccented word-ending vowel all come together in the pronunciation
of "Aliceanna Street", a minor artery on the east side of town. An
old-time East Baltimorean pronounces "Aliceanna" as something like
"owl-uh-ZANN", or /AUl @ 'z&n/, with a very tense /&/ in the third
syllable.
I could go on and on, but not here; I'm already clogging up enough of
a.u.e with this stuff.
>I used to watch _Homicide: Life on the Street_ and I've
>seen _Diner_, but I don't know that either one was particularly
>authentic accentwise.
Kyle Secor from "Homicide" said that the actors were incapable of
imitating a Baltimore accent so they didn't really try. Hell, I
grew up listening to people talk like that and I can't even do a
really good imitation of the accent for more than a few words
without losing it. I wonder if I could find a local radio or
teevee personality with a good B'more accent that I could record.
Of course, now I live around Washington D.C. instead of Baltimore,
and even though B'more is only maybe 40 miles away, people roun'
'ere don' talk 'a way dey do back 'ome. D.C. people sound more like
the generic Midwesternish teevee accent, while my speech sometimes
gets closer to what I was imitating in the previous sentence there.
>It's a difficult issue from my own perspective as a Northeasterner (and a
>Northeast Coast-er to boot[2]) since I'm the one making up all these terms
>and classifications. I can tell you that I don't really think of Maryland
>as part of the South, and, as I've said before, I believe it has won at
>least honorary membership in the Northeast. Maybe it's sort of like
>including Chile in NAFTA, though.
Maryland just passed a state law banning discrimination against gay
people, which I think is the final piece of evidence that we ain't part
of the South no more, thank God.
>The Midwest begins at ... well,
>maybe twenty miles or so inland of the Atlantic Coast.
Dammit, ref, I'd rather have you call me a Southerner than a
Midwesterner.
JM
--
Joe Manfre, Hyattsville, Maryland.
R H Draney
> >incorrectly the other day (so as to rhyme with "nearer").
>
> Where I come from, "mirror" has only one syllable and it rhymes with
> "near". Although some older people seem to say something like
> "MEER-uh", kind of like the Spanish "mira" except with an American-
> style "r" rather than that Spanish tooth-tapping "r" that always sounds
> like a "d" to me.
>
> One of the characteristic elements of the Baltimore speaking style is
> the dropping of unaccented vowels at the ends of words. Maybe what
> started out as "MEER-uh" turned into "meer" that way.
I just *know* I've also heard ['mi:jR] lots of times, but I've never
been able to pin it down as to geography...the only thing I can say with
certainty is that it's not Southern California....r
--
"There was a fairly convincing tv show on fox last week"
- Dave Butner presents evidence that he's from an alternate universe
Steve Hayes
>On Sun, 8 Apr 2001, Steve Hayes wrote:
>
>> Do Americans distinguish between "potty" and "party"?
>
>Certainly the majority of speakers who are rhotic (over 75%?) would:
>/pAti/ vs. /pArti/. I'm not sure if all non-rhotic speakers would
>distinguish them, but I think at least some would based on either vowel
>length, vowel quality, or both. For example, I know for certain that
>non-rhotic Bostonians would say /pati/ ("party") but /pA.ti/ ("potty").
>This is quite analogous to the RPian distinction. I'm not sure, but I
>think at least some non-rhotic New Yorkers would have /pA:ti/ and /pAti/.
I suppose it's related to the cot/cart distinction -- but wouldn't some
pronounce both /pAdi/?
Steve Hayes
http://www.suite101.com/myhome.cfm/methodius
Matthew M. Huntbach
They would not be pronounced alike in British English, either standard
or colloquial. In Estuary English the "tt" in "wetting" would be replaced
by a glottal stop, but the "dd" in wedding" never would be.
Matthew Huntbach
ref
It's possible, but it doesn't seem right somehow. Unfortunately my native
dialect is rhotic, so I can't really be sure about this. I get a bit
non-rhotic when I get very angry, but I think it's a rather phony thing.
ref
> Joe Manfre wrote:
> >
> > ref (rfon...@wesleyan.edu) wrote:
> >
> > >I am doing the same. I caught (not cot) myself pronouncing "mirror"
> > >incorrectly the other day (so as to rhyme with "nearer").
> >
> > Where I come from, "mirror" has only one syllable and it rhymes with
> > "near". Although some older people seem to say something like
> > "MEER-uh", kind of like the Spanish "mira" except with an American-
> > style "r" rather than that Spanish tooth-tapping "r" that always sounds
> > like a "d" to me.
> >
> > One of the characteristic elements of the Baltimore speaking style is
> > the dropping of unaccented vowels at the ends of words. Maybe what
> > started out as "MEER-uh" turned into "meer" that way.
>
> I just *know* I've also heard ['mi:jR] lots of times, but I've never
> been able to pin it down as to geography...the only thing I can say with
> certainty is that it's not Southern California....r
It's not just Bawlamer, though. I think it's close to a homophone of
"mere" in a good deal of the U.S. of A. It might be so even in some bona
fide Prestige Accents, though I am not yet prepared to concede this.
ref
> is close to a standard Hollywoodish Southern accent. I think it sounds
> more like that Chicago accent that was mocked by those "da Bears!" guys
> on "Saturday Night Live". There's also the matter of hardening the /s/
> into something like a /z/, which the joke lists note in giving "zinc"
> as the pronunciation for "sink".
That particular feature of course distinguishes it from the Chicago
accent, which is remarkable for its elimination of a distinct /z/ phoneme.
[...]
> Of course, now I live around Washington D.C. instead of Baltimore,
> and even though B'more is only maybe 40 miles away, people roun'
> 'ere don' talk 'a way dey do back 'ome. D.C. people sound more like
> the generic Midwesternish teevee accent,
Actually that's "Postwar Eastern Coastal Prestige Standard, D.C. Variety".
Very difficult to pin down what makes that accent distinctive.
Mark Barratt
>On Mon, 9 Apr 2001, Steve Hayes wrote:
[...]
>> I suppose it's related to the cot/cart distinction -- but wouldn't some
>> pronounce both /pAdi/?
>
>It's possible, but it doesn't seem right somehow. Unfortunately my native
>dialect is rhotic, so I can't really be sure about this. I get a bit
>non-rhotic when I get very angry, but I think it's a rather phony thing.
Perhaps it's a genetic mistake?
ref
I pronounce metal/medal/meddle alike (ordinarily), same with
petal/peddle/pedal, but again I don't conceive of petal and peddle/pedal
as homophones. But I think I often do have distinct pronunciations of
"riding" and "writing": the vowel in "writing" has some tendency to be
slightly shorter than that in "riding". They overlap, though, like
whatever that other example was that was being discussed before. The
internal consonant, /t/ or /d/, is the same phonetically.
ref
I didn't know that "madder" was a color, but now that I do, I'd make it
like "matter", and not like "more mad". I do not pronounce "adder"
(snake) and "adder" (one who adds) alike. The first "adder" has the "cat"
vowel, while the second one has the "cad" vowel.
This is actually somewhat weird/interesting. When I first encountered the
digital logic term "adder", I didn't realize it came from "add", and I
actually assumed it was named after the snake, I think in part because
some of the logic gate diagrams reminded me of pictures of snakes (?!). So
to this day I use the "snake" pronunciation of logic-gate "adder" when by
rights I should be using the "add" pronunciation.
Donna Richoux
But, I don't know what you mean by "I don't conceive of XX as
homophones." You said something like that before. Does that mean, "I
never realized before that they are homophones," or "They are not really
homophones for me because..." and then what?
--
Puzzled --- Donna Richoux
ref
That's your perception.
GrapeApe
>
>Yes. The interesting question is: how old is the oldest exhibitress
>of Throat Creak?
Over a hundred I'm certain. Its a fairly common ingredient of old hag voices,
as it can be common in a youthful whine.
ref
Well, there actually is one real sense in which they're different from
other kinds of homophones. You alluded to this yourself. You *can*
pronounce it in a more British style, differentiating /t/ from /d/. Every
American has this right, and sometimes it is a duty (to avoid confusing
your listeners). You can say "I said "me-tal", not "medal"."
But what I really meant was this: A pair like "two" and "too" are
unquestionably homophones. Even "they're" and "there" I might consider to
be homophones, though I can pronounce them differently in non-bizarre
situations. (Similarly, "I'll" and "aisle"/"isle".) But whatever it is
that makes intervocalic American /t/ identical with intervocalic American
/d/, it doesn't do enough to make the word pairs seem like true
homophones. Maybe it is that we always have that option in reserve of
using a real aspirated [t] sound. Maybe the Platonic American "metal" has
a non-d-like, aspirated [t] sound.