Iony?

[Ruud Harmsen]

Is pronouncing irony as iony very uncommon or mildly unusual?

More: http://rudhar.com/fonetics/ionyen.htm

[Peter T. Daniels]

On Jan 5, 5:26 am, Ruud Harmsen <r...@rudhar.com> wrote:
> Is pronouncing irony as iony very uncommon or mildly unusual?
>
> More:http://rudhar.com/fonetics/ionyen.htm

Welcome back ...

Pwesumably* you're listening to the common (Bwitsh) speech
"impediment" that labializes whatever r's survive in their dialect ...
"irony" isn't pronounced like "iron" (eye-urn), but as it's spelled --
eye-ruh-nee.

insufficient battery time & probably bandwidth to go hear it, here at
LSA.

[Ruud Harmsen]

Sat, 5 Jan 2013 05:40:24 -0800 (PST): "Peter T. Daniels"
<gram...@verizon.net> schreef/wrote:

>On Jan 5, 5:26�am, Ruud Harmsen <r...@rudhar.com> wrote:
>> Is pronouncing irony as iony very uncommon or mildly unusual?
>>
>> More:http://rudhar.com/fonetics/ionyen.htm
>
>Welcome back ...
>
>Pwesumably* you're listening to the common (Bwitsh) speech
>"impediment" that labializes whatever r's survive in their dialect ...

Yes, some do, Cockney I think.

But that wasn't the case here, as Walter Matthau was American, from
New York City's Lower East Side, according to Wikipedia.

>"irony" isn't pronounced like "iron" (eye-urn), but as it's spelled --
>eye-ruh-nee.

Right, that's what I thought.

>insufficient battery time & probably bandwidth to go hear it, here at
>LSA.

OK, later perhaps, then.
Walter Ma

[Yusuf B Gursey]

what is LSA? Linguistic Society of America?

[Peter T. Daniels]

As I have mentioned in various other threads ...

[Peter T. Daniels]

On Jan 5, 12:02 pm, Ruud Harmsen <r...@rudhar.com> wrote:
> Sat, 5 Jan 2013 05:40:24 -0800 (PST): "Peter T. Daniels"

> <gramma...@verizon.net> schreef/wrote:

> >On Jan 5, 5:26 am, Ruud Harmsen <r...@rudhar.com> wrote:

> >> Is pronouncing irony as iony very uncommon or mildly unusual?
>
> >> More:http://rudhar.com/fonetics/ionyen.htm
>
> >Welcome back ...
>
> >Pwesumably* you're listening to the common (Bwitsh) speech
> >"impediment" that labializes whatever r's survive in their dialect ...
>
> Yes, some do, Cockney I think.

I don't know about Cockney. I was thinking of upper-class twits
(doubtless the Funkster will take that as a derogation of his adopted
langoage).

> But that wasn't the case here, as Walter Matthau was American, from
> New York City's Lower East Side, according to Wikipedia.

You might have mentioned it was an _actor_. Is it an unguarded
interview, or as a character? Actors' performances are no more
legitimate a source of dialect info than singers are.

[Arnaud F.]

Le dimanche 6 janvier 2013 16:06:24 UTC+1, Peter T. Daniels a écrit :


>
> As I have mentioned in various other threads ...

***

Most people possibly don't care...

A.

[Peter T. Daniels]

Lovely. Now yangg is attacking Yusuf.

[Arnaud F.]

***

Talking about you, fraud.

Quote above is yours, Alzheimer.

A.

[Arnaud F.]

Le dimanche 6 janvier 2013 16:08:48 UTC+1, Peter T. Daniels a écrit :

>
> I don't know about Cockney. I was thinking of upper-class twits
>
> (doubtless the Funkster will take that as a derogation of his adopted
>
> langoage).
>

***

langoaige is closer to stylish female Franglish.

A.

[Yusuf B Gursey]

sorry, wasn't following. in which city, may I ask?

[Ruud Harmsen]

Sun, 6 Jan 2013 07:08:48 -0800 (PST): "Peter T. Daniels"
<gram...@verizon.net> schreef/wrote:

>On Jan 5, 12:02�pm, Ruud Harmsen <r...@rudhar.com> wrote:

>> >> More: http://rudhar.com/fonetics/ionyen.htm

>You might have mentioned it was an _actor_. Is it an unguarded
>interview, or as a character?

It's all there, in my little article:
==
The Odd Couple [...] 1968, actor Walter Matthau, impersonating Oscar
Madison [...] the word �irony� without an r.
==

>Actors' performances are no more
>legitimate a source of dialect info than singers are.

Of course, there we go again.

http://rudhar.com/fonetics/ionyen.htm
==
A deliberate trait to depict a character who doesn�t know how to say
even the simplest of �difficult� words properly?
==

So I already accounted for the possibility that this might not be the
actor's dialect, but that of the character he was trying to portray.

[benl...@ihug.co.nz]

On Jan 7, 7:23 am, Ruud Harmsen <r...@rudhar.com> wrote:
> Sun, 6 Jan 2013 07:08:48 -0800 (PST): "Peter T. Daniels"

> <gramma...@verizon.net> schreef/wrote:

As someone who grew up with an "incorrect" pronunciation of the word
"iron", I don't find the pronunciation of "irony" you describe at all
surprising. I would probably not even notice it as unusual if I heard
it from a non-rhotic speaker -- I'm impressed by your careful
listening. I would guess that it's not uncommon in actual speech,
despite not being recognized by dictionaries. People reading the word
would naturally make some association with "iron". There's even an
adjective "iron-y" for which your pronunciation is the accepted one.
There might even be folk-etymological ideas relating the two.

Although I still find the OED's new pronunciation system problematic,
it's interesting that they allow the pronunciation /ˈaɪərənɪ/ for
both the adjective and the noun, whereas the noun "iron" can only be /
ˈaɪən/. (Apparently they have not heard the rhotic pronunciation /
ˈaɪərn/.)

[Nathan Sanders]

In article
<5cebdd38-e2be-4f23...@bx10g2000vbb.googlegroups.com>,

It was in Boston this year. Luckily, it was not nearly as cold this
year around as it was when it was in Boston the last time.

Next year is in Minneapolis.

Nathan

--
Department of Linguistics
Swarthmore College
http://sanders.phonologist.org/

[Brian M. Scott]

On Sun, 06 Jan 2013 18:49:28 -0500, Nathan Sanders
<san...@alum.mit.edu> wrote in
<news:sanders-B56702...@news.eternal-september.org>
in sci.lang:

> In article
> <5cebdd38-e2be-4f23...@bx10g2000vbb.googlegroups.com>,
> Yusuf B Gursey <ygu...@gmail.com> wrote:

>> On Jan 6, 10:06�am, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:

>>> On Jan 5, 12:08�pm, Yusuf B Gursey <ygur...@gmail.com>
>>> wrote:

[...]

>>>> what is LSA? Linguistic Society of America?

>>> As I have mentioned in various other threads ...

>> sorry, wasn't following. in which city, may I ask?

> It was in Boston this year. Luckily, it was not nearly as
> cold this year around as it was when it was in Boston the
> last time.

> Next year is in Minneapolis.

St. Paul is nicer, but the Twin Cities really are something
of an oasis of culture. Still, it seems a strange place to
hold a January meeting.

Brian

[Peter T. Daniels]

On Jan 6, 8:14 pm, "Brian M. Scott" <b.sc...@csuohio.edu> wrote:
> On Sun, 06 Jan 2013 18:49:28 -0500, Nathan Sanders

> <sand...@alum.mit.edu> wrote in

> <news:sanders-B56702...@news.eternal-september.org>
> in sci.lang:
>
> > In article

> > <5cebdd38-e2be-4f23-9db4-e66502622...@bx10g2000vbb.googlegroups.com>,

> >  Yusuf B Gursey <ygur...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >> On Jan 6, 10:06 am, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
> >>> On Jan 5, 12:08 pm, Yusuf B Gursey <ygur...@gmail.com>
> >>> wrote:
>
> [...]
>
> >>>> what is LSA? Linguistic Society of America?
> >>> As I have mentioned in various other threads ...
> >> sorry, wasn't following. in which city, may I ask?
> > It was in Boston this year.  Luckily, it was not nearly as
> > cold this year around as it was when it was in Boston the
> > last time.

It sure was on Thursday. But they predicted snow for Sunday morning,
and it was positively balmy.

> > Next year is in Minneapolis.
>
> St. Paul is nicer, but the Twin Cities really are something
> of an oasis of culture.  Still, it seems a strange place to
> hold a January meeting.

The next three are San Francisco, Washington DC, and Austin.

[Brian M. Scott]

On Sun, 6 Jan 2013 20:00:23 -0800 (PST), "Peter T. Daniels"
<gram...@verizon.net> wrote in
<news:282ce89e-58ad-4840...@c16g2000yqi.googlegroups.com>
in sci.lang:

[...]

> The next three are San Francisco, Washington DC, and
> Austin.

Oddly enough, I've never been to Austin, though I've been to
two January math meetings in San Antonio. The only bad part
of that was having to come back to Cleveland!

Brian

[Adam Funk]

On 2013-01-06, benl...@ihug.co.nz wrote:

> As someone who grew up with an "incorrect" pronunciation of the word
> "iron", I don't find the pronunciation of "irony" you describe at all

What wrong pronunciation was that? (Just curious.)

> surprising. I would probably not even notice it as unusual if I heard
> it from a non-rhotic speaker -- I'm impressed by your careful
> listening. I would guess that it's not uncommon in actual speech,
> despite not being recognized by dictionaries. People reading the word
> would naturally make some association with "iron". There's even an
> adjective "iron-y" for which your pronunciation is the accepted one.
> There might even be folk-etymological ideas relating the two.
>
> Although I still find the OED's new pronunciation system problematic,
> it's interesting that they allow the pronunciation /ˈaɪərənɪ/ for
> both the adjective and the noun, whereas the noun "iron" can only be /
> ˈaɪən/. (Apparently they have not heard the rhotic pronunciation /
> ˈaɪərn/.)

I do find the OED's lack of support for rhotic pronunciations rather
irritating.


--
When a man tells you that he got rich through hard work, ask him
whose? --- Don Marquis

[Adam Funk]

On 2013-01-06, Peter T. Daniels wrote:

> On Jan 5, 12:02 pm, Ruud Harmsen <r...@rudhar.com> wrote:
>> Sat, 5 Jan 2013 05:40:24 -0800 (PST): "Peter T. Daniels"
>> <gramma...@verizon.net> schreef/wrote:
>> >On Jan 5, 5:26 am, Ruud Harmsen <r...@rudhar.com> wrote:
>
>> >> Is pronouncing irony as iony very uncommon or mildly unusual?
>>
>> >> More:http://rudhar.com/fonetics/ionyen.htm
>>
>> >Welcome back ...
>>
>> >Pwesumably* you're listening to the common (Bwitsh) speech
>> >"impediment" that labializes whatever r's survive in their dialect ...
>>
>> Yes, some do, Cockney I think.
>
> I don't know about Cockney. I was thinking of upper-class twits
> (doubtless the Funkster will take that as a derogation of his adopted
> langoage).

You're nuts. I remain rhotic & don't hang around with upper-class
twits (or like them). (I do aim to use the British & American lexica
in the appropriate places, because it makes communication easier, but
that's just common sense.)

I suspect you're right to put "impediment" in scare-quotes --- I've
long suspected it's at least as much of an affectation as an
impediment, although I'm probably biased because I can't stand
Jonathan Woss for other reasons.


--
The three-martini lunch is the epitome of American efficiency.
Where else can you get an earful, a bellyful and a snootful at
the same time? [Gerald Ford, 1978]

[Peter T. Daniels]

On Jan 6, 11:39 pm, "Brian M. Scott" <b.sc...@csuohio.edu> wrote:
> On Sun, 6 Jan 2013 20:00:23 -0800 (PST), "Peter T. Daniels"

> <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote in

> <news:282ce89e-58ad-4840...@c16g2000yqi.googlegroups.com>
> in sci.lang:
>
> [...]
>
> > The next three are San Francisco, Washington DC, and
> > Austin.
>
> Oddly enough, I've never been to Austin, though I've been to
> two January math meetings in San Antonio.  The only bad part
> of that was having to come back to Cleveland!

The AOS has gone to both Texas towns (and also Houston, sort of -- at
the Galleria, which is miles from anywhere so it was impossible to
visit the Menil or the Rothko Chapel), and both were wonderful
places. The Alamo isn't a disappointment.

[Peter T. Daniels]

On Jan 7, 5:12 am, Adam Funk <a24...@ducksburg.com> wrote:

> On 2013-01-06, benli...@ihug.co.nz wrote:
> > As someone who grew up with an "incorrect" pronunciation of the word
> > "iron", I don't find the pronunciation of "irony" you describe at all
>
> What wrong pronunciation was that?  (Just curious.)

"eye-run," presumably.

> surprising.

[Adam Funk]

Well, I'm familiar with the issue of learning words from reading & not
knowing how to pronounce them (personally, & I know others with the
experience), but 'grew up with an "incorrect" pronunciation of the
word' suggested (to me, at least) that he meant others were doing it
too.


--
Master Foo said: "A man who mistakes secrets for knowledge is like
a man who, seeking light, hugs a candle so closely that he smothers
it and burns his hand." --- Eric Raymond

[benl...@ihug.co.nz]

On Jan 7, 11:12 pm, Adam Funk <a24...@ducksburg.com> wrote:

Well, it's inconsistent. Part of the inconsistency results from the
ongoing shift to the new pronunciation system -- which is itself
unsatisfactory.

So when I look up "park", I find: Brit. /pɑːk/ , U.S. /pɑrk/
which ignores non-rhotic US and rhotic UK pronunciations, but at least
acknowledges the presence of /r/ in some people's versions.
"Ark" on the other hand is given as just /ɑːk/.
but "bar" is /bɑː(r)/. (I think these are still in the old system.)

[benl...@ihug.co.nz]

On Jan 8, 10:04 am, Adam Funk <a24...@ducksburg.com> wrote:
> On 2013-01-07, Peter T. Daniels wrote:
>
> > On Jan 7, 5:12 am, Adam Funk <a24...@ducksburg.com> wrote:
> >> On 2013-01-06, benli...@ihug.co.nz wrote:
> >> > As someone who grew up with an "incorrect" pronunciation of the word
> >> > "iron", I don't find the pronunciation of "irony" you describe at all
>
> >> What wrong pronunciation was that?  (Just curious.)
>
> > "eye-run," presumably.
>
> >> surprising.
>
> Well, I'm familiar with the issue of learning words from reading & not
> knowing how to pronounce them (personally, & I know others with the
> experience), but 'grew up with an "incorrect" pronunciation of the
> word' suggested (to me, at least) that he meant others were doing it
> too.

Sure. I assume I learned it ("eye-r@n") from those around me, but it
was only much later that I became aware that it was non-standard, and
I never got around to questioning my immediate family and friends on
the matter. I concluded that it was (historically) a spelling
pronunciation. Not that I picked up the word from books -- it's so
common that I must have learned it in the normal way.

This came up a couple of years ago here, and I did find the OED's
explanation of how the pronunciation got out of whack with the
spelling -- IIRC they suggest an original trisyllabic pronunciation
with two successive schwa syllables, and the final being dropped (ai-@-
r@n > ai-@rn). Don't know whether that's generally accepted.

However, this time, looking through a few dictionaries, I came upon
something interesting in the Old Webster (1909?) that I dig out and
dust off occasionally.
For "iron" they give only "eye-urn" (I won't attempt to reproduce
their notation), but they refer to a note s.v. "apron".
For "apron" they have both "ape-run" and "ape-urn".
And the note says:
"The second pronunciation above [i.e. "ape-urn"] has until recently
been preferred. The change in pronunciation is analogous to that in
citron, saffron, etc., formerly pronounced [sit-urn, saf-urn] etc.
Iron still retains the pronunciation [eye-urn]."]
Interestingly OED gives both /ˈeɪprən/ and /ˈeɪpən/, but only /-rən/
for citron, saffron and a couple of other words I checked.
So possibly my little localect has simply pursued this analogical
tendency a little further than the rest.

[Brian M. Scott]

On Mon, 7 Jan 2013 15:27:55 -0800 (PST),
"benl...@ihug.co.nz" <benl...@ihug.co.nz> wrote in
<news:b2fb6fa2-8c15-4015...@m4g2000pbd.googlegroups.com>
in sci.lang:

[...]

> "Ark" on the other hand is given as just /ɑːk/. but "bar"
> is /bɑː(r)/. (I think these are still in the old system.)

They are.

Brian

[Ruud Harmsen]

Mon, 7 Jan 2013 15:53:49 -0800 (PST): "benl...@ihug.co.nz"
<benl...@ihug.co.nz> schreef/wrote:

>This came up a couple of years ago here, and I did find the OED's
>explanation of how the pronunciation got out of whack with the
>spelling -- IIRC they suggest an original trisyllabic pronunciation
>with two successive schwa syllables, and the final being dropped (ai-@-
>r@n > ai-@rn). Don't know whether that's generally accepted.

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/iron#Etymology
So originally, there was an s (pronounced z?) and an r. Like still now
in Dutch: ijzer (noun), ijzeren (adjective).

[Ruud Harmsen]

Tue, 08 Jan 2013 11:33:15 +0100: Ruud Harmsen <r...@rudhar.com>
schreef/wrote:
>http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/iron#Etymology

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/irony
also gives a pronunciation with a post-syllable r. I can't remember if
Walter Matthau spoke non-rhotic in the movie, but because he's from
New York he might have. That woudl explain what I heard.

[Adam Funk]

On 2013-01-07, benl...@ihug.co.nz wrote:

> On Jan 7, 11:12 pm, Adam Funk <a24...@ducksburg.com> wrote:

>> I do find the OED's lack of support for rhotic pronunciations rather
>> irritating.

(OK, not *total* lack of support from them --- but inconsistent.)

> Well, it's inconsistent. Part of the inconsistency results from the
> ongoing shift to the new pronunciation system -- which is itself
> unsatisfactory.
>
> So when I look up "park", I find: Brit. /pɑːk/ , U.S. /pɑrk/
> which ignores non-rhotic US and rhotic UK pronunciations, but at least
> acknowledges the presence of /r/ in some people's versions.
> "Ark" on the other hand is given as just /ɑːk/.
> but "bar" is /bɑː(r)/. (I think these are still in the old system.)

Right, and there's "hot dog", which was discussed here a while back:

Pronunciation: Brit. /ˈhɒt dɒɡ/ , U.S. /ˈhɑt ˌdɑɡ/

That completely ignores the fact that a large number of Americans
(including me) have different vowels in "hot" & "dog". Wiktionary
makes more careful distinctions:

(UK) IPA: /ˈhɒt.dɒɡ/
(US) IPA: /ˈhɒt.dɒɡ/, /ˈhɒt.dɔɡ/
(Boston, New England) IPA: /ˈhʌt.dɒɡ/, [ˈhʌʔ.dɒːɡ]

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/hot_dog#Pronunciation

I like Wiki*'s policy of accommodating lots of distinctions, although
they admit to missing a few:

If, for example, you pronounce cot /ˈkɒt/ and caught /ˈkɔːt/ the
same, then you may simply ignore the difference between the symbols
/ɒ/ and /ɔː/, just as you ignore the distinction between the
written vowels o and au when pronouncing them.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:IPA_for_English


--
The history of the world is the history of a privileged few.
--- Henry Miller

[Adam Funk]

That's interesting.


--
The generation of random numbers is too important to be left to
chance. [Robert R. Coveyou]

[Ruud Harmsen]

Sat, 05 Jan 2013 11:26:10 +0100: Ruud Harmsen <r...@rudhar.com>
schreef/wrote:

>Is pronouncing irony as iony very uncommon or mildly unusual?
>
>More: http://rudhar.com/fonetics/ionyen.htm

I added two appendices,
http://rudhar.com/fonetics/ionyen.htm#20130108-1430, with references
to the actual spots in the movie. Eye-urny (Tony Randall) and eye-a-ny
(Walter Matthau), that what they were saying.

[Peter T. Daniels]

On Jan 8, 10:52 am, Ruud Harmsen <r...@rudhar.com> wrote:
> Sat, 05 Jan 2013 11:26:10 +0100: Ruud Harmsen <r...@rudhar.com>
> schreef/wrote:
>
> >Is pronouncing irony as iony very uncommon or mildly unusual?
>
> >More:http://rudhar.com/fonetics/ionyen.htm
>

> I added two appendices,http://rudhar.com/fonetics/ionyen.htm#20130108-1430, with references

> to the actual spots in the movie. Eye-urny (Tony Randall) and eye-a-ny
> (Walter Matthau), that what they were saying.

On the radio I just heard an interview with a lawyer who spoke of the
"ear-uh-ny" of his situation, and a few sentences later reiterated
that it was "eye-ron-ic."

(Since he was American, the labialization of his r's would indeed be
considered an impediment, like the one a childhood friend of mine was
sent to a speech therapist to cure.)

[Ruud Harmsen]

Tue, 8 Jan 2013 12:51:23 -0800 (PST): "Peter T. Daniels"
<gram...@verizon.net> schreef/wrote:

>On the radio I just heard an interview with a lawyer who spoke of the

>"ear-uh-ny" of his situation, [...]

To irr is human. (:-0)

[Ruud Harmsen]

Tue, 8 Jan 2013 12:51:23 -0800 (PST): "Peter T. Daniels"
<gram...@verizon.net> schreef/wrote:

>(Since he was American, the labialization of his r's would indeed be
>considered an impediment, like the one a childhood friend of mine was
>sent to a speech therapist to cure.)

I don't really see what r-labialization (which does indeed occur in
Britain, but is rare and uncommon) has to do with the issue.

[Arnaud F.]

Le mercredi 9 janvier 2013 07:18:22 UTC+1, Ruud Harmsen a écrit :
> Tue, 8 Jan 2013 12:51:23 -0800 (PST): "Peter T. Daniels"
>

>

> I don't really see what r-labialization (which does indeed occur in
>
> Britain, but is rare and uncommon) has to do with the issue.

***

The bigoted fraud can't help insulting other speakers of English.

A.

[Ruud Harmsen]

Tue, 8 Jan 2013 22:54:18 -0800 (PST): "Arnaud F."
<fournet...@wanadoo.fr> schreef/wrote:

>The bigoted fraud can't help insulting other speakers of English.

You are not exactly the person of choice when it comes to lecturing
others about insults, are you?

[Trond Engen]

Ruud Harmsen:

If I were in need of insults, I think one of his lectures would be a
good place to start. Not very creative, maybe, but it seems like a
simple and consistent system.

--
Trond Engen

[Arnaud F.]

***

Actually my insults are currently limited to:

- PTD who is a bigoted fraud,
- the Gaggithaler Möngi,
- Brian Maynard Scott, who is an asshole.

They deserve the treatment they get.

A.

[Peter T. Daniels]

On Jan 9, 1:18 am, Ruud Harmsen <r...@rudhar.com> wrote:
> Tue, 8 Jan 2013 12:51:23 -0800 (PST): "Peter T. Daniels"

> <gramma...@verizon.net> schreef/wrote:

>
> >(Since he was American, the labialization of his r's would indeed be
> >considered an impediment, like the one a childhood friend of mine was
> >sent to a speech therapist to cure.)
>
> I don't really see what r-labialization (which does indeed occur in
> Britain, but is rare and uncommon) has to do with the issue.

It's not "rare and uncommon," it's a feature of Brit upper-class-twit
affectation.

Your transcription "iony" suggests that that's what you were hearing.

[Ruud Harmsen]

Wed, 09 Jan 2013 12:28:20 +0100: Trond Engen <tron...@engen.priv.no>
schreef/wrote:

Yes, lecturing in a different sense, or I used the word in a wrong
one.

[Ruud Harmsen]

Wed, 9 Jan 2013 05:28:11 -0800 (PST): "Peter T. Daniels"
<gram...@verizon.net> schreef/wrote:

>On Jan 9, 1:18�am, Ruud Harmsen <r...@rudhar.com> wrote:
>> Tue, 8 Jan 2013 12:51:23 -0800 (PST): "Peter T. Daniels"
>> <gramma...@verizon.net> schreef/wrote:
>>
>> >(Since he was American, the labialization of his r's would indeed be
>> >considered an impediment, like the one a childhood friend of mine was
>> >sent to a speech therapist to cure.)
>>
>> I don't really see what r-labialization (which does indeed occur in
>> Britain, but is rare and uncommon) has to do with the issue.
>
>It's not "rare and uncommon," it's a feature of Brit upper-class-twit
>affectation.

British upper-class-twits are rare. And most of them have different
speech defects than that one. Mohvove, labialized ah's also occuh vin
certain types of upstairs-downstairs style Cockney.

>Your transcription "iony" suggests that that's what you were hearing.

It really helps if you first read what you comment to. Here's the link
again: http://rudhar.com/fonetics/ionyen.htm and in particular
http://rudhar.com/fonetics/ionyen.htm#20130108-1610 .

And because you are known for not clicking links:

<capclocks on>I WAS WRITING ABOUT AN AMERICAN MOVIE WITH AMERICAN
ACTORS AND AMERICAN CHARACTERS</CAPSLOCKS> (and two English women).
One rhothic and one not, i.e. New Yorkish. Who says weuyse (worse) and
ceuyse (curse). He says eye-uh-ny and the rhotic guy says eye-err-ny.
I err not cause I heuyd it myself. And not through the grapevine.

[Adam Funk]

On 2013-01-09, Peter T. Daniels wrote:

> On Jan 9, 1:18 am, Ruud Harmsen <r...@rudhar.com> wrote:
>> Tue, 8 Jan 2013 12:51:23 -0800 (PST): "Peter T. Daniels"
>> <gramma...@verizon.net> schreef/wrote:
>>
>> >(Since he was American, the labialization of his r's would indeed be
>> >considered an impediment, like the one a childhood friend of mine was
>> >sent to a speech therapist to cure.)
>>
>> I don't really see what r-labialization (which does indeed occur in
>> Britain, but is rare and uncommon) has to do with the issue.
>
> It's not "rare and uncommon," it's a feature of Brit upper-class-twit
> affectation.

Overt UCTs are rare, however. Wikipedia (FWIW) says:

Use of labiodental /r/ is commonly stigmatized by prescriptivists
who suggest standards of correctness within the English language.
Regardless, the consonant [ʋ] is used in a variety of other
languages and is increasing in many accents of British English.[1]
The majority of speakers using this realization are from the
southeastern part of the country, particularly in London. It is
also occasionally heard in some speakers of Boston and New York
City English, though more often in an exaggerated parody of these
dialects, as famously portrayed by the Looney Tunes character Elmer
Fudd.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R-labialization

[Peter T. Daniels]

On Jan 9, 9:13 am, Ruud Harmsen <r...@rudhar.com> wrote:
> Wed, 9 Jan 2013 05:28:11 -0800 (PST): "Peter T. Daniels"

> <gramma...@verizon.net> schreef/wrote:

It further transpired that you were talking about Jack Klugman and
Tony Randall. I suppose you're not familiar with their work, but they
very definitely both played specific types, and the accents they
ADOPTED FOR THE CHARACTERS THEY PORTRAYED need have nothing whatsoever
to do with any actual accent or with their own native speech.

Most likely, you were talking about *Grumpy Old Men* (or its sequel),
which was an exploitation of the relationship of their characters in
the TV verson of *The Odd Couple* (which they presumably could not
reprise without paying immense licensing fees to Neil Simon).

Maybe you heard a clip of Jack Klugman in his obitiaries last week. Go
check out _all_ his movies to maybe get an idea of his range.

[Peter T. Daniels]

On Jan 9, 9:20 am, Adam Funk <a24...@ducksburg.com> wrote:
> On 2013-01-09, Peter T. Daniels wrote:
>
> > On Jan 9, 1:18 am, Ruud Harmsen <r...@rudhar.com> wrote:
> >> Tue, 8 Jan 2013 12:51:23 -0800 (PST): "Peter T. Daniels"
> >> <gramma...@verizon.net> schreef/wrote:
>
> >> >(Since he was American, the labialization of his r's would indeed be
> >> >considered an impediment, like the one a childhood friend of mine was
> >> >sent to a speech therapist to cure.)
>
> >> I don't really see what r-labialization (which does indeed occur in
> >> Britain, but is rare and uncommon) has to do with the issue.
>
> > It's not "rare and uncommon," it's a feature of Brit upper-class-twit
> > affectation.
>
> Overt UCTs are rare, however.  Wikipedia (FWIW) says:
>
>    Use of labiodental /r/ is commonly stigmatized by prescriptivists
>    who suggest standards of correctness within the English language.
>    Regardless, the consonant [ʋ] is used in a variety of other
>    languages and is increasing in many accents of British English.[1]
>    The majority of speakers using this realization are from the
>    southeastern part of the country, particularly in London. It is
>    also occasionally heard in some speakers of Boston and New York
>    City English, though more often in an exaggerated parody of these
>    dialects, as famously portrayed by the Looney Tunes character Elmer
>    Fudd.
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R-labialization

No, Elmer Fudd's problem is yet another different thing! His "wabbits"
have nothing of the rhotic about them.

[benl...@ihug.co.nz]

Really? And all the upper-class British twits you keep referring to
definitely have "something rhotic about them"? Could you perhaps point
to some credible phonetic study which would support this claim?

And what about Barbara Walters and Kay Francis? Or the character Barry
Kripke in "Big Bang Theory"? Or David Zayas (Puerto Rican actor,
raised in the Bronx)? These are all Americans mentioned in Wikipedia
(s.v. "Rhotacism") as having the labialized-r pronunciation.

Of course fictional characters may use an exaggerated version of the
trait (this would also apply to Pontius Pilate as depicted in "Life of
Brian"), but that hardly makes it a "different thing".

Incidentally, the various Brits mentioned in this same article as
having labialized-r are by no means all of upper-class origin --
ee.gg. Roy Hodgson (football coach), Matthew Bellamy (singer),
Jonathan Ross (Wossy) (TV presenter), Frank Muir (radio writer and
talker), Roy Jenkins (politician)... You can easily check their online
biographies if you doubt this.

In fact, it would be interesting to know how this particular feature
came to be stereotyped as a class indicator, since it is neither
exclusively British nor exclusively upper-class. I have not found any
leads to serious linguistic opinion on the matter.

[Adam Funk]

But he did a lot to popularize Wagner, so he's not all bad!

Seriously, I guess you mean that his wabbits have [w] rather than [ʋ].
Frankly, I don't think I could pronounce --- possibly even
consistently hear --- the distinction without training, so maybe the
actors who did his voice similarly did an approximation.

Now, returning to the accent/impediment/affectation question:--- let's
suppose that some people (e.g., some Cockneys) *naturally* acquire
this [ʋ] for /r/; what do twits deliberately going for the affectation
produce --- wouldn't it be a close approximation drawn from their
stock of natural phones?


(Returning to a different recent topic, I see that I'm apparently a
fan of sentential adverbs that violate the "ADJ+ly, S" = "It is ADJ
that S" principle. Oh well.)


--
They do (play, that is), and nobody gets killed, but Metallic K.O. is
the only rock album I know where you can actually hear hurled beer
bottles breaking against guitar strings. --- Lester Bangs

[johnk]

The movie "The Odd Couple" stars Walter Mathau as Oscar and Jack Lemon as Felix. The TV show had Jack Klugman and Tony Randall playing the parts. The You-tube clip is from the movie. Mathau's character is lacking an 'r' and it sounds like 'iony'. Lemon's character has the 'r' and it sounds like 'eye-earn-y' which is how I would pronounce it here in Kansas.

JohnK

[benl...@ihug.co.nz]

On Jan 10, 12:41 pm, johnk <jhobartk...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wednesday, January 9, 2013 12:38:04 PM UTC-6, Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> > On Jan 9, 9:13 am, Ruud Harmsen <r...@rudhar.com> wrote:
>
> > > Wed, 9 Jan 2013 05:28:11 -0800 (PST): "Peter T. Daniels"
>
> > > <gramma...@verizon.net> schreef/wrote:
>
> > > >On Jan 9, 1:18 am, Ruud Harmsen <r...@rudhar.com> wrote:
>
> > > >> Tue, 8 Jan 2013 12:51:23 -0800 (PST): "Peter T. Daniels"
>
> > > >> <gramma...@verizon.net> schreef/wrote:
>
> > > >> >(Since he was American, the labialization of his r's would indeed be
>
> > > >> >considered an impediment, like the one a childhood friend of mine was
>
> > > >> >sent to a speech therapist to cure.)
>
> > > >> I don't really see what r-labialization (which does indeed occur in
>
> > > >> Britain, but is rare and uncommon) has to do with the issue.
>
> > > >It's not "rare and uncommon," it's a feature of Brit upper-class-twit
>
> > > >affectation.
>
> > > British upper-class-twits are rare. And most of them have different
>
> > > speech defects than that one. Mohvove, labialized ah's also occuh vin
>
> > > certain types of upstairs-downstairs style Cockney.
>
> > > >Your transcription "iony" suggests that that's what you were hearing.
>
> > > It really helps if you first read what you comment to. Here's the link
>

> > > again:http://rudhar.com/fonetics/ionyen.htmandin particularhttp://rudhar.com/fonetics/ionyen.htm#20130108-1610.

>
> > > And because you are known for not clicking links:
>
> > > <capclocks on>I WAS WRITING ABOUT AN AMERICAN MOVIE WITH AMERICAN
>
> > > ACTORS AND AMERICAN CHARACTERS</CAPSLOCKS> (and two English women).
>
> > > One rhothic and one not, i.e. New Yorkish. Who says weuyse (worse) and
>
> > > ceuyse (curse). He says eye-uh-ny and the rhotic guy says eye-err-ny.
>
> > > I err not cause I heuyd it myself. And not through the grapevine.
>
> > It further transpired that you were talking about Jack Klugman and
>
> > Tony Randall. I suppose you're not familiar with their work, but they
>
> > very definitely both played specific types, and the accents they
>
> > ADOPTED FOR THE CHARACTERS THEY PORTRAYED need have nothing whatsoever
>
> > to do with any actual accent or with their own native speech.
>
> > Most likely, you were talking about *Grumpy Old Men* (or its sequel),
>
> > which was an exploitation of the relationship of their characters in
>
> > the TV verson of *The Odd Couple* (which they presumably could not
>
> > reprise without paying immense licensing fees to Neil Simon).
>
> > Maybe you heard a clip of Jack Klugman in his obitiaries last week. Go
>
> > check out _all_ his movies to maybe get an idea of his range.
>
> The movie "The Odd Couple" stars Walter Mathau as Oscar and Jack Lemon as Felix.  The TV show had Jack Klugman and Tony Randall playing the parts.  The You-tube clip is from the movie.  Mathau's character is lacking an 'r' and it sounds like 'iony'.  Lemon's character has the 'r' and it sounds like 'eye-earn-y' which is how I would pronounce it here in Kansas.
>
> JohnK

Congratulations! You're the first to confirm my suspicion that "eye-
earn-y" is not uncommon. (Ruud's site also links to an anonymous
Wiktionary speaker with the same.)
You've also straightened out the identities of the actors in the
original clip. Jack Lemmon, I see, was born, raised and educated in
the Boston area, hence might be non-rhotic in his native accent. I
wonder whether he/they made Felix rhotic in order to heighten the
contrast with Oscar?

[Peter T. Daniels]

On Jan 9, 6:41 pm, johnk <jhobartk...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wednesday, January 9, 2013 12:38:04 PM UTC-6, Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> > On Jan 9, 9:13 am, Ruud Harmsen <r...@rudhar.com> wrote:
>
> > > Wed, 9 Jan 2013 05:28:11 -0800 (PST): "Peter T. Daniels"
>
> > > <gramma...@verizon.net> schreef/wrote:
>
> > > >On Jan 9, 1:18 am, Ruud Harmsen <r...@rudhar.com> wrote:
>
> > > >> Tue, 8 Jan 2013 12:51:23 -0800 (PST): "Peter T. Daniels"
>
> > > >> <gramma...@verizon.net> schreef/wrote:
>
> > > >> >(Since he was American, the labialization of his r's would indeed be
>
> > > >> >considered an impediment, like the one a childhood friend of mine was
>
> > > >> >sent to a speech therapist to cure.)
>
> > > >> I don't really see what r-labialization (which does indeed occur in
>
> > > >> Britain, but is rare and uncommon) has to do with the issue.
>
> > > >It's not "rare and uncommon," it's a feature of Brit upper-class-twit
>
> > > >affectation.
>
> > > British upper-class-twits are rare. And most of them have different
>
> > > speech defects than that one. Mohvove, labialized ah's also occuh vin
>
> > > certain types of upstairs-downstairs style Cockney.
>
> > > >Your transcription "iony" suggests that that's what you were hearing.
>
> > > It really helps if you first read what you comment to. Here's the link
>

> > > again:http://rudhar.com/fonetics/ionyen.htmandin particularhttp://rudhar.com/fonetics/ionyen.htm#20130108-1610.

>
> > > And because you are known for not clicking links:
>
> > > <capclocks on>I WAS WRITING ABOUT AN AMERICAN MOVIE WITH AMERICAN
>
> > > ACTORS AND AMERICAN CHARACTERS</CAPSLOCKS> (and two English women).
>
> > > One rhothic and one not, i.e. New Yorkish. Who says weuyse (worse) and
>
> > > ceuyse (curse). He says eye-uh-ny and the rhotic guy says eye-err-ny.
>
> > > I err not cause I heuyd it myself. And not through the grapevine.
>
> > It further transpired that you were talking about Jack Klugman and
>
> > Tony Randall. I suppose you're not familiar with their work, but they
>
> > very definitely both played specific types, and the accents they
>
> > ADOPTED FOR THE CHARACTERS THEY PORTRAYED need have nothing whatsoever
>
> > to do with any actual accent or with their own native speech.
>
> > Most likely, you were talking about *Grumpy Old Men* (or its sequel),
>
> > which was an exploitation of the relationship of their characters in
>
> > the TV verson of *The Odd Couple* (which they presumably could not
>
> > reprise without paying immense licensing fees to Neil Simon).
>
> > Maybe you heard a clip of Jack Klugman in his obitiaries last week. Go
>
> > check out _all_ his movies to maybe get an idea of his range.
>
> The movie "The Odd Couple" stars Walter Mathau as Oscar and Jack Lemon as Felix.  The TV show had Jack Klugman and Tony Randall playing the parts.  The You-tube clip is from the movie.  Mathau's character is lacking an 'r' and it sounds like 'iony'.  Lemon's character has the 'r' and it sounds like 'eye-earn-y' which is how I would pronounce it here in Kansas.

Lemmon.

That's what I said. They couldn't do their "Odd Couple" characters in
a movie without paying Neil Simon for the use of the characters -- or
maybe even without having him write the script himself -- so they
cloned the characters in the "Grumpy Old Men" franchise.

They also worked together in a number of stage plays after the TV
series ended, including *The Odd Couple* for at least one run (a while
ago I read the book Jack wrote about their partnership after Tony
died).

[Peter T. Daniels]

No, only a lifetime of hearing them. You might try tracking down
audios of Max Black and Eric Blackall, professors of, respectively,
philosophy and German literature at Cornell whose classes I took.

> And what about Barbara Walters and Kay Francis? Or the character Barry
> Kripke in "Big Bang Theory"? Or David Zayas (Puerto Rican actor,
> raised in the Bronx)? These are all Americans mentioned in Wikipedia
> (s.v. "Rhotacism") as having the labialized-r pronunciation.

I have almost never listened to Barbara Walters, but Gilda Radner's
Baba Wawa had no rhotacism. Kripke's quirk is utterly artificial and
is essentially the Elmer Fudd [w]. Zayas (whom I know from Dexter, and
he had a cameo in a broadcase TV show last week) has a Nuyorican
accent, and the /r/ may or may not be characteristic.

> Of course fictional characters may use an exaggerated version of the
> trait (this would also apply to Pontius Pilate as depicted in "Life of
> Brian"), but that hardly makes it a "different thing".

No, but the sould of it does.

> Incidentally, the various Brits mentioned in this same article as
> having labialized-r are by no means all of upper-class origin --
> ee.gg. Roy Hodgson (football coach), Matthew Bellamy (singer),
> Jonathan Ross (Wossy) (TV presenter), Frank Muir (radio writer and
> talker), Roy Jenkins (politician)... You can easily check their online
> biographies if you doubt this.

The only one of those I've heard of is Frank Muir, and he's certainly
one I was referring to. Perhaps I've heard the others, though I rather
doubt it.

> In fact, it would be interesting to know how this particular feature
> came to be stereotyped as a class indicator, since it is neither
> exclusively British nor exclusively upper-class. I have not found any

> leads to serious linguistic opinion on the matter.-

Maybe persons from other classes who have it don't make it onto the
media.

A few weeks ago B&N was selling all Brit TV at 50%, so I got the
complete Jeeves & Wooster series for $30. Presumably I will hear
plenty of UCTs there.

[Peter T. Daniels]

On Jan 9, 5:15 pm, Adam Funk <a24...@ducksburg.com> wrote:
> On 2013-01-09, Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> > On Jan 9, 9:20 am, Adam Funk <a24...@ducksburg.com> wrote:

> >> Overt UCTs are rare, however.  Wikipedia (FWIW) says:
>
> >>    Use of labiodental /r/ is commonly stigmatized by prescriptivists
> >>    who suggest standards of correctness within the English language.
> >>    Regardless, the consonant [ʋ] is used in a variety of other
> >>    languages and is increasing in many accents of British English.[1]
> >>    The majority of speakers using this realization are from the
> >>    southeastern part of the country, particularly in London. It is
> >>    also occasionally heard in some speakers of Boston and New York
> >>    City English, though more often in an exaggerated parody of these
> >>    dialects, as famously portrayed by the Looney Tunes character Elmer
> >>    Fudd.
>
> >>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R-labialization
>
> > No, Elmer Fudd's problem is yet another different thing! His "wabbits"
> > have nothing of the rhotic about them.
>
> But he did a lot to popularize Wagner, so he's not all bad!

? Who suggested he was bad?

> Seriously, I guess you mean that his wabbits have [w] rather than [ʋ].

There's nothing "rhotistic" about the latter IPA symbol. There is also
nothing rhotistic about Elmer Fudd's /r/s. Compare those named just
above by Ross.

> Frankly, I don't think I could pronounce --- possibly even
> consistently hear --- the distinction without training, so maybe the
> actors who did his voice similarly did an approximation.

Mel Blanc is not "actors." He is only the greatest, and most
versatile, voiceover artist who has ever lived. (These days, animated
features center on the otherwise famous actors who voice the
characters. In the olden days, the focus was on the characters and
Disney's voicers were supposedly never identified.)

> Now, returning to the accent/impediment/affectation question:--- let's
> suppose that some people (e.g., some Cockneys) *naturally* acquire
> this [ʋ] for /r/; what do twits deliberately going for the affectation
> produce --- wouldn't it be a close approximation drawn from their
> stock of natural phones?

For the gazillionth time, RP is virtually no one's native accent. They
go to Public School in order to have it beaten into them. At moments
of extreme stress they presumably revert to their roots -- just, in
fact, like Eliza Doolittle at Ascot. (Which, if the book I have
contaiining both the play and the screenplay is to be believed, is
virtually the only scene that was not taken verbatim from GBS.)

[benl...@ihug.co.nz]

Neither of them "upper class" in any serious sense.

> > And what about Barbara Walters and Kay Francis? Or the character Barry
> > Kripke in "Big Bang Theory"? Or David Zayas (Puerto Rican actor,
> > raised in the Bronx)? These are all Americans mentioned in Wikipedia
> > (s.v. "Rhotacism") as having the labialized-r pronunciation.
>
> I have almost never listened to Barbara Walters, but Gilda Radner's
> Baba Wawa had no rhotacism.

Strange that other people should refer to "Gilda Radner's "Baba Wawa"
impersonation ... on Saturday Night Live, featuring her idiosyncratic
speech with its rounded "R"" (from Wikipedia on BW).

Kripke's quirk is utterly artificial and
> is essentially the Elmer Fudd [w]. Zayas (whom I know from Dexter, and
> he had a cameo in a broadcase TV show last week) has a Nuyorican
> accent, and the /r/ may or may not be characteristic.

Whether characteristic or not, you admit he does it?

> > Of course fictional characters may use an exaggerated version of the
> > trait (this would also apply to Pontius Pilate as depicted in "Life of
> > Brian"), but that hardly makes it a "different thing".
>
> No, but the sould of it does.

Yet apparently you are unable to explain what makes this ineffable
difference in sound?

> > Incidentally, the various Brits mentioned in this same article as
> > having labialized-r are by no means all of upper-class origin --
> > ee.gg. Roy Hodgson (football coach), Matthew Bellamy (singer),
> > Jonathan Ross (Wossy) (TV presenter), Frank Muir (radio writer and
> > talker), Roy Jenkins (politician)... You can easily check their online
> > biographies if you doubt this.
>
> The only one of those I've heard of is Frank Muir, and he's certainly
> one I was referring to. Perhaps I've heard the others, though I rather
> doubt it.
>
> > In fact, it would be interesting to know how this particular feature
> > came to be stereotyped as a class indicator, since it is neither
> > exclusively British nor exclusively upper-class. I have not found any
> > leads to serious linguistic opinion on the matter.-
>
> Maybe persons from other classes who have it don't make it onto the
> media.

I just finished giving you a list of half a dozen people "from other
classes" who have this feature! Or is being in the media your
definition of "upper class"?

[benl...@ihug.co.nz]

On Jan 10, 11:07 am, "benli...@ihug.co.nz" <benli...@ihug.co.nz>
wrote:

Well, here's something a little bit helpful:

Paul Foulkes & Gerard J.Docherty, "Another chapter in the story of /
r/: 'Labiodental' variants in British English'. Journal of
Sociolinguistics 4(1): 30-59 (2000).

Some points from a quick perusal:

- First evidence from the early XIX c.
- Long regarded as an infantilism or speech defect.
- Stereotypical in unflattering portrayals of the upper classes, in
authors from Dickens to Orwell to Monty Python
- Wells (1982) apparently the first to suggest that it is _not_
significantly more frequent in upper class speech. (I notice that
Ross's original "U and non-U" paper (1954) does not mention it.)
- At the present time it is actually an expanding feature in non-
standard English, especially the southeast. (More detail in the book
_Urban Voices_ (1999) edited by these two.) It seems to have been
originally a Cockney feature, which they suggest may have its earliest
origins in the London Jewish community.

[pauljk]

"Peter T. Daniels" <gram...@verizon.net> wrote in message
news:b260f13c-6975-4773...@n9g2000vbv.googlegroups.com...

Beaten into them? Oh, really?

I have been to England many times and in the seventies I was seconded
there for two years by a British company I was working for in NZ.
Perhaps it wasn't gazillion times, but many many times I came across
young pre-school children speaking RP just like their parents.

I wonder how many of them would still fit into your "virtually no one".

pjk

[Adam Funk]

On 2013-01-10, Peter T. Daniels wrote:

> On Jan 9, 5:15 pm, Adam Funk <a24...@ducksburg.com> wrote:
>> On 2013-01-09, Peter T. Daniels wrote:
>> > On Jan 9, 9:20 am, Adam Funk <a24...@ducksburg.com> wrote:
>
>> >> Overt UCTs are rare, however.  Wikipedia (FWIW) says:
>>
>> >>    Use of labiodental /r/ is commonly stigmatized by prescriptivists
>> >>    who suggest standards of correctness within the English language.
>> >>    Regardless, the consonant [ʋ] is used in a variety of other
>> >>    languages and is increasing in many accents of British English.[1]
>> >>    The majority of speakers using this realization are from the
>> >>    southeastern part of the country, particularly in London. It is
>> >>    also occasionally heard in some speakers of Boston and New York
>> >>    City English, though more often in an exaggerated parody of these
>> >>    dialects, as famously portrayed by the Looney Tunes character Elmer
>> >>    Fudd.
>>
>> >>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R-labialization
>>
>> > No, Elmer Fudd's problem is yet another different thing! His "wabbits"
>> > have nothing of the rhotic about them.
>>
>> But he did a lot to popularize Wagner, so he's not all bad!
>
> ? Who suggested he was bad?

Well, he was always trying to shoot Bugs Bunny.

>> Seriously, I guess you mean that his wabbits have [w] rather than [ʋ].
>
> There's nothing "rhotistic" about the latter IPA symbol. There is also
> nothing rhotistic about Elmer Fudd's /r/s. Compare those named just
> above by Ross.

What's the symbol for the thing you consider a labialized /r/ then?

>> Frankly, I don't think I could pronounce --- possibly even
>> consistently hear --- the distinction without training, so maybe the
>> actors who did his voice similarly did an approximation.
>
> Mel Blanc is not "actors." He is only the greatest, and most
> versatile, voiceover artist who has ever lived.

Of course! But several different artists (I don't see what's wrong
with calling people who do voices "actors" --- after all, the term
applies to radio performers) alternated in the rôle of Elmer Fudd from
1937 to 1989 (when Mel Blanc died); from scanning the list, Arthur
Q. Bryan seems to have played Fudd at least as often as Blanc did.

http://www.imdb.com/character/ch0029092/


--
Unix is a user-friendly operating system. It's just very choosy about
its friends.

[Adam Funk]

For the gazillionth time, that is not true. It is often, but
certainly not always, a native accent. If anything, it's more likely
to be native now than it used to be: fewer people are trying to learn
it deliberately, & the media no longer promote it. Furthermore, very
few speakers of RP have this labialized /r/.

Anyway, coming back to the point of the thread:--- what's the
difference between a natural lablialized /r/ & an affected one?

[Adam Funk]

On 2013-01-10, pauljk wrote:

> "Peter T. Daniels" <gram...@verizon.net> wrote in message

>> For the gazillionth time, RP is virtually no one's native accent. They
>> go to Public School in order to have it beaten into them.
>
> Beaten into them? Oh, really?
>
> I have been to England many times and in the seventies I was seconded
> there for two years by a British company I was working for in NZ.
> Perhaps it wasn't gazillion times, but many many times I came across
> young pre-school children speaking RP just like their parents.
>
> I wonder how many of them would still fit into your "virtually no one".

Apparently his mind is made up on this one, & evidence isn't going to
help.


--
Slade was the coolest band in England. They were the kind of guys
that would push your car out of a ditch. --- Alice Cooper

[Peter T. Daniels]

On Jan 10, 12:28 am, "benli...@ihug.co.nz" <benli...@ihug.co.nz>

Distinguished elderly British professors are not upper class?

> > > And what about Barbara Walters and Kay Francis? Or the character Barry
> > > Kripke in "Big Bang Theory"? Or David Zayas (Puerto Rican actor,
> > > raised in the Bronx)? These are all Americans mentioned in Wikipedia
> > > (s.v. "Rhotacism") as having the labialized-r pronunciation.
>
> > I have almost never listened to Barbara Walters, but Gilda Radner's
> > Baba Wawa had no rhotacism.
>
> Strange that other people should refer to "Gilda Radner's "Baba Wawa"
> impersonation ... on Saturday Night Live, featuring her idiosyncratic
> speech with its rounded "R"" (from Wikipedia on BW).
>
> Kripke's quirk is utterly artificial and
>
> > is essentially the Elmer Fudd [w]. Zayas (whom I know from Dexter, and
> > he had a cameo in a broadcase TV show last week) has a Nuyorican
> > accent, and the /r/ may or may not be characteristic.
>
> Whether characteristic or not, you admit he does it?
>
> > > Of course fictional characters may use an exaggerated version of the
> > > trait (this would also apply to Pontius Pilate as depicted in "Life of
> > > Brian"), but that hardly makes it a "different thing".
>
> > No, but the sould of it does.
>
> Yet apparently you are unable to explain what makes this ineffable
> difference in sound?

Yes, I am unable to explain it. If I write down my impression of what
causes the distinction, you'll just mock it. If you can't hear the
difference between Baba Wawa / Elmer Fudd / Barry Kripke [all of them
caricatures] and Frank Muir / David Zayas, then you need to pay more
attention.

> > > Incidentally, the various Brits mentioned in this same article as
> > > having labialized-r are by no means all of upper-class origin --
> > > ee.gg. Roy Hodgson (football coach), Matthew Bellamy (singer),
> > > Jonathan Ross (Wossy) (TV presenter), Frank Muir (radio writer and
> > > talker), Roy Jenkins (politician)... You can easily check their online
> > > biographies if you doubt this.
>
> > The only one of those I've heard of is Frank Muir, and he's certainly
> > one I was referring to. Perhaps I've heard the others, though I rather
> > doubt it.
>
> > > In fact, it would be interesting to know how this particular feature
> > > came to be stereotyped as a class indicator, since it is neither
> > > exclusively British nor exclusively upper-class. I have not found any
> > > leads to serious linguistic opinion on the matter.-
>
> > Maybe persons from other classes who have it don't make it onto the
> > media.
>
> I just finished giving you a list of half a dozen people "from other
> classes" who have this feature! Or is being in the media your
> definition of "upper class"?

Apparently it's not yours.

[Peter T. Daniels]

No idea. Certainly not "labiodental approximant."

> >> Frankly, I don't think I could pronounce --- possibly even
> >> consistently hear --- the distinction without training, so maybe the
> >> actors who did his voice similarly did an approximation.
>
> > Mel Blanc is not "actors." He is only the greatest, and most
> > versatile, voiceover artist who has ever lived.
>
> Of course!  But several different artists (I don't see what's wrong
> with calling people who do voices "actors" --- after all, the term
> applies to radio performers) alternated in the rôle of Elmer Fudd from
> 1937 to 1989 (when Mel Blanc died); from scanning the list, Arthur
> Q. Bryan seems to have played Fudd at least as often as Blanc did.

I find that rather hard to believe.

> http://www.imdb.com/character/ch0029092/

[Peter T. Daniels]

On Jan 10, 7:04 am, Adam Funk <a24...@ducksburg.com> wrote:
> On 2013-01-10, Peter T. Daniels wrote:
>
> > On Jan 9, 5:15 pm, Adam Funk <a24...@ducksburg.com> wrote:
> >> Now, returning to the accent/impediment/affectation question:--- let's
> >> suppose that some people (e.g., some Cockneys) *naturally* acquire
> >> this [ʋ] for /r/; what do twits deliberately going for the affectation
> >> produce --- wouldn't it be a close approximation drawn from their
> >> stock of natural phones?
>
> > For the gazillionth time, RP is virtually no one's native accent. They
> > go to Public School in order to have it beaten into them. At moments
> > of extreme stress they presumably revert to their roots -- just, in
> > fact, like Eliza Doolittle at Ascot. (Which, if the book I have
> > contaiining both the play and the screenplay is to be believed, is
> > virtually the only scene that was not taken verbatim from GBS.)
>
> For the gazillionth time, that is not true.  It is often, but
> certainly not always, a native accent.  If anything, it's more likely
> to be native now than it used to be: fewer people are trying to learn
> it deliberately, & the media no longer promote it.  Furthermore, very
> few speakers of RP have this labialized /r/.
>
> Anyway, coming back to the point of the thread:--- what's the
> difference between a natural lablialized /r/ & an affected one?

Affectation.

[Ruud Harmsen]

Wed, 9 Jan 2013 10:38:04 -0800 (PST): "Peter T. Daniels"
<gram...@verizon.net> schreef/wrote:

>> http://rudhar.com/fonetics/ionyen.htm

>It further transpired that you were talking about Jack Klugman and
>Tony Randall.

Who is Jack Klugman? How could I have been talking about him if I
don't know who he is?

>I suppose you're not familiar with their work, but they
>very definitely both played specific types, and the accents they
>ADOPTED FOR THE CHARACTERS THEY PORTRAYED need have nothing whatsoever
>to do with any actual accent or with their own native speech.

So? Did I suggest that then?

>Most likely, you were talking about *Grumpy Old Men* (or its sequel),

What gives you that idea? Never heard of that either, never wrote
about it.

>which was an exploitation of the relationship of their characters in
>the TV verson of *The Odd Couple* (which they presumably could not
>reprise without paying immense licensing fees to Neil Simon).

I did not write about any TV version. I wrote about a 1968 film
(movie, in your dialect).

>Maybe you heard a clip of Jack Klugman in his obitiaries last week. Go
>check out _all_ his movies to maybe get an idea of his range.

Only, maybe, if you first, finally read my little article before
commenting on it any further. It's so much easier and more effecient
that way.

[Ruud Harmsen]

Wed, 9 Jan 2013 15:41:26 -0800 (PST): johnk <jhoba...@gmail.com>
schreef/wrote:

>The movie "The Odd Couple" stars Walter Mathau as Oscar and Jack
>Lemon as Felix. The TV show had Jack Klugman and Tony Randall
>playing the parts.

Yes, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Klugman . But I never watched
that TV Series and never wrote about it.

>The You-tube clip is from the movie. Mathau's character is lacking an 'r' and
>it sounds like 'iony'. Lemon's character has the 'r' and it sounds like
>'eye-earn-y'

Exactly.

>which is how I would pronounce it here in Kansas.

Right.

[Ruud Harmsen]

Wed, 9 Jan 2013 17:57:03 -0800 (PST): "benl...@ihug.co.nz"
<benl...@ihug.co.nz> schreef/wrote:

>You've also straightened out the identities of the actors in the
>original clip. Jack Lemmon, I see, was born, raised and educated in
>the Boston area, hence might be non-rhotic in his native accent. I
>wonder whether he/they made Felix rhotic in order to heighten the
>contrast with Oscar?

Who is Jack Lemmon? I thought Tony Randall played Felix Unger in the
1968 movie? Did I mix that up?

[Ruud Harmsen]

Thu, 10 Jan 2013 15:28:31 +0100: Ruud Harmsen <r...@rudhar.com>
schreef/wrote:

>Only, maybe, if you first, finally read my little article before
>commenting on it any further. It's so much easier and more effecient
>that way.

And YOU should do proper research before dumping nonsense on the Web,
you lazy fool!!!

[Peter T. Daniels]

On Jan 10, 9:35 am, Ruud Harmsen <r...@rudhar.com> wrote:
> Wed, 9 Jan 2013 17:57:03 -0800 (PST): "benli...@ihug.co.nz"
> <benli...@ihug.co.nz> schreef/wrote:

>
> >You've also straightened out the identities of the actors in the
> >original clip. Jack Lemmon, I see, was born, raised and educated in
> >the Boston area, hence might be non-rhotic in his native accent. I
> >wonder whether he/they made Felix rhotic in order to heighten the
> >contrast with Oscar?
>
> Who is Jack Lemmon? I thought Tony Randall played Felix Unger in the
> 1968 movie? Did I mix that up?

First there was a Broadway stage play, then there was a very
successful movie with the long-established team of Lemmon and Matthau
(Jack Lemmon's first Oscar was for The Caine Mutiny long before, his
second for Save the Tiger well after) -- they first worked together in
The Apartment (1960) -- then there was a long-running TV series with
Tony Randall and Jack Klugman. Randall was known mostly from TV (his
movies tended to be unusual ones), Klugman from Broadway (he was the
original male lead in Gypsy) and TV but he was in more mainstream
movies, notably Twelve Angry Men.

[Peter T. Daniels]

On Jan 10, 9:28 am, Ruud Harmsen <r...@rudhar.com> wrote:
> Wed, 9 Jan 2013 10:38:04 -0800 (PST): "Peter T. Daniels"

> <gramma...@verizon.net> schreef/wrote:

>
> >>http://rudhar.com/fonetics/ionyen.htm
> >It further transpired that you were talking about Jack Klugman and
> >Tony Randall.
>
> Who is Jack Klugman? How could I have been talking about him if I
> don't know who he is?
>
> >I suppose you're not familiar with their work, but they
> >very definitely both played specific types, and the accents they
> >ADOPTED FOR THE CHARACTERS THEY PORTRAYED need have nothing whatsoever
> >to do with any actual accent or with their own native speech.
>
> So? Did I suggest that then?
>
> >Most likely, you were talking about *Grumpy Old Men* (or its sequel),
>
> What gives you that idea? Never heard of that either, never wrote
> about it.
>
> >which was an exploitation of the relationship of their characters in
> >the TV verson of *The Odd Couple* (which they presumably could not
> >reprise without paying immense licensing fees to Neil Simon).
>
> I did not write about any TV version. I wrote about a 1968 film
> (movie, in your dialect).

Not if you claimed Tony Randall was in it.

> >Maybe you heard a clip of Jack Klugman in his obitiaries last week. Go
> >check out _all_ his movies to maybe get an idea of his range.
>
> Only, maybe, if you first, finally read my little article before
> commenting on it any further. It's so much easier and more effecient
> that way.

It seems you didn't even know who you were talking about.

[Ruud Harmsen]

Thu, 10 Jan 2013 07:09:43 -0800 (PST): "Peter T. Daniels"
<gram...@verizon.net> schreef/wrote:

Yes, that's right. I had mixed up some names. Meanwhile corrected.
Thanks for clarifying.

[Ruud Harmsen]

Thu, 10 Jan 2013 07:11:13 -0800 (PST): "Peter T. Daniels"
<gram...@verizon.net> schreef/wrote:

>> I did not write about any TV version. I wrote about a 1968 film
>> (movie, in your dialect).
>
>Not if you claimed Tony Randall was in it.

Yes, that was a stupid mistake. I hadn't properly done my homework in
January 8.

>> >Maybe you heard a clip of Jack Klugman in his obitiaries last week. Go
>> >check out _all_ his movies to maybe get an idea of his range.
>>
>> Only, maybe, if you first, finally read my little article before
>> commenting on it any further. It's so much easier and more effecient
>> that way.
>
>It seems you didn't even know who you were talking about.

I did, but I copied the wrong actorname from the wrong Wikipedia page.

[Nathan Sanders]

In article <j2n2s9x...@news.ducksburg.com>,

Adam Funk <a24...@ducksburg.com> wrote:

> On 2013-01-10, Peter T. Daniels wrote:
>
> >
> > There's nothing "rhotistic" about the latter IPA symbol. There is also
> > nothing rhotistic about Elmer Fudd's /r/s. Compare those named just
> > above by Ross.
>
> What's the symbol for the thing you consider a labialized /r/ then?

Experts who know what they're talking (e.g., John Wells in _Accents of
English 2: The British Isles_ and Peter Trudgill in _Sociolinguistic
Variation and Change_) use the symbol for a labiodental approximant to
represent this sound in the relevant dialects.

Nathan

--
Department of Linguistics
Swarthmore College
http://sanders.phonologist.org/

[benl...@ihug.co.nz]

Not ipso facto, no. Blackall's father was a grocer. Black was the son
of immigrant Azeri Jews, brought to London when he was three years
old.

It's disappointing that you can't attempt a phonetic account of the
difference.
I would suggest that perhaps the real speakers with labialized /r/
use a range of different sounds, perhaps [ʋ] (labiodental
approximant), which the phoneticians I referred to in another post
seem to consider the most common British variant; perhaps [ɥ]
(labialized palatal approximant); or some [ɹ]-like articulation with
lip rounding. To the lay person these all sound like [w], so the
caricaturists may just use [w].

Except for my third possibility above, none of these sounds have
anything "rhotic" about them phonetically, except of course that they
take the place of /r/.

> > > Incidentally, the various Brits mentioned in this same article
as
> > > > having labialized-r are by no means all of upper-class origin --
> > > > ee.gg. Roy Hodgson (football coach), Matthew Bellamy (singer),
> > > > Jonathan Ross (Wossy) (TV presenter), Frank Muir (radio writer and
> > > > talker), Roy Jenkins (politician)... You can easily check their online
> > > > biographies if you doubt this.
>
> > > The only one of those I've heard of is Frank Muir, and he's certainly
> > > one I was referring to. Perhaps I've heard the others, though I rather
> > > doubt it.
>
> > > > In fact, it would be interesting to know how this particular feature
> > > > came to be stereotyped as a class indicator, since it is neither
> > > > exclusively British nor exclusively upper-class. I have not found any
> > > > leads to serious linguistic opinion on the matter.-
>
> > > Maybe persons from other classes who have it don't make it onto the
> > > media.
>
> > I just finished giving you a list of half a dozen people "from other
> > classes" who have this feature! Or is being in the media your
> > definition of "upper class"?
>
> Apparently it's not yours.

Well, no. And I don't think it was Monty Python's either. But even if
we use your definition, whatever it is ("speaks RP"? "graduate of
Oxford/Cambridge"?), it is not a sociolinguistic fact that labialized-/
r/ is more prevalent among the upper classes. It is a literary
stereotype.

[Ruud Harmsen]

Thu, 10 Jan 2013 15:35:49 +0100: Ruud Harmsen <r...@rudhar.com>
schreef/wrote:

>Who is Jack Lemmon? I thought Tony Randall played Felix Unger in the
>1968 movie? Did I mix that up?

Yes I did. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Randall . My article is
wrong. Will have to correct it.

[Ruud Harmsen]

Thu, 10 Jan 2013 15:48:04 -0500: Nathan Sanders <san...@alum.mit.edu>
schreef/wrote:

>Experts who know what they're talking (e.g., John Wells in _Accents of
>English 2: The British Isles_ and Peter Trudgill in _Sociolinguistic
>Variation and Change_) use the symbol for a labiodental approximant to
>represent this sound in the relevant dialects.

Think so too. In other words: a north-of-big-rivers Dutch <w>.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pauline_Collins
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarah_Moffat
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upstairs,_Downstairs

I remember she had an accent like that (the character, not necessarily
the actress too).

Can't find a good example in that series. However, different program,
different accent, same actors:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&v=eSVWEm_wvC4&feature=endscreen
1:02 married
1:08 sorry?
3:02 story.
5:00 sorry, hurry

[Ruud Harmsen]

Thu, 10 Jan 2013 22:43:26 +0100: Ruud Harmsen <r...@rudhar.com>
schreef/wrote:

>Think so too. In other words: a north-of-big-rivers Dutch <w>.
>
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pauline_Collins
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarah_Moffat
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upstairs,_Downstairs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MiL-fUGINVo
Mister Hudson, pronounced as Mister Udson, so there's a linking r,
pronounced as a labiodental approximant. (1:51)

3:23 It's a Fvench name (Clémence)

6:47 My mother is ... (Muvvevvis, the phoneme /D/ is also [v] in this
dialect)

[Ruud Harmsen]

Thu, 10 Jan 2013 22:59:33 +0100: Ruud Harmsen <r...@rudhar.com>

schreef/wrote:

>Thu, 10 Jan 2013 22:43:26 +0100: Ruud Harmsen <r...@rudhar.com>
>schreef/wrote:
>
>>Think so too. In other words: a north-of-big-rivers Dutch <w>.
>>
>>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pauline_Collins
>>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarah_Moffat
>>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upstairs,_Downstairs
>
>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MiL-fUGINVo

14:10 She was a gypsy pvincess and vevvy beautiful.

[Ruud Harmsen]

Thu, 10 Jan 2013 22:59:33 +0100: Ruud Harmsen <r...@rudhar.com>
schreef/wrote:

>6:47 My mother is ... (Muvvevvis, the phoneme /D/ is also [v] in this
>dialect)

Interesting that I remember that she had this accent, all the way from
1974 or so so that's almost 40 years ago. But I now notice that almost
every other actor has a different accent in that series (Ireland,
Scotland, London, Yorkshire), while back then, I only distinguished
Scots and everything else.

And I still can't pinpoint all of them.

[Adam Funk]

On 2013-01-10, Peter T. Daniels wrote:

> On Jan 10, 6:59 am, Adam Funk <a24...@ducksburg.com> wrote:
>> On 2013-01-10, Peter T. Daniels wrote:

>>> Adam:

>> >> Frankly, I don't think I could pronounce --- possibly even
>> >> consistently hear --- the distinction without training, so maybe the
>> >> actors who did his voice similarly did an approximation.
>>
>> > Mel Blanc is not "actors." He is only the greatest, and most
>> > versatile, voiceover artist who has ever lived.
>>
>> Of course!  But several different artists (I don't see what's wrong
>> with calling people who do voices "actors" --- after all, the term
>> applies to radio performers) alternated in the rôle of Elmer Fudd from
>> 1937 to 1989 (when Mel Blanc died); from scanning the list, Arthur
>> Q. Bryan seems to have played Fudd at least as often as Blanc did.
>
> I find that rather hard to believe.
>
>> http://www.imdb.com/character/ch0029092/

I looked it up just to check, because I was aware that others had done
Fudd's voice, but I was surprised by the results. But hey, there they
are! Anyway, it seems that Bryan & Fudd *both* did Fudd's voice(s) in
some cartoons.


--
Master Foo once said to a visiting programmer: "There is more
Unix-nature in one line of shell script than there is in ten
thousand lines of C." --- Eric Raymond

[Adam Funk]

On 2013-01-10, benl...@ihug.co.nz wrote:

> On Jan 11, 1:38 am, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:

>> Yes, I am unable to explain it. If I write down my impression of what
>> causes the distinction, you'll just mock it. If you can't hear the
>> difference between Baba Wawa / Elmer Fudd / Barry Kripke [all of them
>> caricatures] and Frank Muir / David Zayas, then you need to pay more
>> attention.
>
> It's disappointing that you can't attempt a phonetic account of the
> difference.
> I would suggest that perhaps the real speakers with labialized /r/
> use a range of different sounds, perhaps [ʋ] (labiodental
> approximant), which the phoneticians I referred to in another post
> seem to consider the most common British variant; perhaps [ɥ]
> (labialized palatal approximant); or some [ɹ]-like articulation with
> lip rounding. To the lay person these all sound like [w], so the
> caricaturists may just use [w].
>
> Except for my third possibility above, none of these sounds have
> anything "rhotic" about them phonetically, except of course that they
> take the place of /r/.

Is it reasonable to suppose that "rho"-terms have two different
meanings? ISTM that Peter is using "rhotacism" to mean "sounding like
[r]" whereas the rest of us are more interested in "used for /r/".


--
A recent study conducted by Harvard University found that the average
American walks about 900 miles a year. Another study by the AMA found
that Americans drink, on average, 22 gallons of alcohol a year. This
means, on average, Americans get about 41 miles to the gallon.
http://www.cartalk.com/content/average-americans-mpg

[Adam Funk]

On 2013-01-10, Peter T. Daniels wrote:

> On Jan 10, 12:28 am, "benli...@ihug.co.nz" <benli...@ihug.co.nz>
> wrote:
>> On Jan 10, 5:22 pm, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:

>> > No, only a lifetime of hearing them. You might try tracking down
>> > audios of Max Black and Eric Blackall, professors of, respectively,
>> > philosophy and German literature at Cornell whose classes I took.
>>
>> Neither of them "upper class" in any serious sense.
>
> Distinguished elderly British professors are not upper class?

No. Maybe upper middle class. None of the professors or lecturers I
know personally speak RP either, although I'd expect that not to be
the case at Oxbridge. (David Crystal does speak RP, though.)


--
A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
A: Top-posting.
Q: What is the most annoying thing on usenet and in e-mail?

[Adam Funk]

I'm interested in the difference in *output*, not input!

[benl...@ihug.co.nz]

On Jan 11, 11:06 am, Adam Funk <a24...@ducksburg.com> wrote:

> On 2013-01-10, benli...@ihug.co.nz wrote:
> > On Jan 11, 1:38 am, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
> >> Yes, I am unable to explain it. If I write down my impression of what
> >> causes the distinction, you'll just mock it. If you can't hear the
> >> difference between Baba Wawa / Elmer Fudd / Barry Kripke [all of them
> >> caricatures] and Frank Muir / David Zayas, then you need to pay more
> >> attention.
>
> > It's disappointing that you can't attempt a phonetic account of the
> > difference.
> >  I would suggest that perhaps the real speakers with labialized /r/
> > use a range of different sounds, perhaps [ʋ] (labiodental
> > approximant), which the phoneticians I referred to in another post
> > seem to consider the most common British variant; perhaps [ɥ]
> > (labialized palatal approximant); or some [ɹ]-like articulation with
> > lip rounding. To the lay person these all sound like [w], so the
> > caricaturists may just use [w].
>
> > Except for my third possibility above, none of these sounds have
> > anything "rhotic" about them phonetically, except of course that they
> > take the place of /r/.
>
> Is it reasonable to suppose that "rho"-terms have two different
> meanings?  ISTM that Peter is using "rhotacism" to mean "sounding like
> [r]" whereas the rest of us are more interested in "used for /r/".
>
> --

I was actually commenting on Peter's:

"No, Elmer Fudd's problem is yet another different thing! His
"wabbits"
have nothing of the rhotic about them."

He seemed to be contrasting EF with all the previously mentioned cases
of labialized-r, which would imply that all the others had "something
of the rhotic" about them. Just what that something is, we have been
unsuccessful in elucidating.

I think some people (speech therapists?) have used "rhotacism" to mean
something like "problem with [r]". This potentially conflicts with the
long established linguistic usage to describe a sound change which
results in an [r]. In the present case this is confusing, since, if
there is a problem, it is that these speakers produce something which
is _not_ an [r]. Perhaps we should call it "wotacism"?

[benl...@ihug.co.nz]

On Jan 11, 12:01 pm, "benli...@ihug.co.nz" <benli...@ihug.co.nz>

Curses! I was beaten to it by Dave Timpe, on this group, July 16,
1999! As it happens, he was replying to PTD, who was pointing out
exactly this potential confusion in terminology.

[António Marques]

> Well, no..

Where was it that I saw - not too many years ago - a discussion of the fact
that class in the US is merely linked to economic status, quite unlike what
happens in the rest of the World?
--
Sent from one of my newsreaders

[Peter T. Daniels]

On Jan 10, 3:48 pm, Nathan Sanders <sand...@alum.mit.edu> wrote:
> In article <j2n2s9xfsh....@news.ducksburg.com>,

>  Adam Funk <a24...@ducksburg.com> wrote:
>
> > On 2013-01-10, Peter T. Daniels wrote:
>
> > > There's nothing "rhotistic" about the latter IPA symbol. There is also
> > > nothing rhotistic about Elmer Fudd's /r/s. Compare those named just
> > > above by Ross.
>
> > What's the symbol for the thing you consider a labialized /r/ then?
>
> Experts who know what they're talking (e.g., John Wells in _Accents of
> English 2: The British Isles_ and Peter Trudgill in _Sociolinguistic
> Variation and Change_) use the symbol for a labiodental approximant to
> represent this sound in the relevant dialects.

So they consider its r-ness irrelevant or uninteresting?

Well, I suppose they're the same ones that have no graphic distinction
for NY "can" vs. "can."

[Peter T. Daniels]

Wow. You're half Canadian and half New Zealish, yet you've bought into
the Brit notion that "class" is determined solely by birth and not by
personal accomplishment?

BTW Max Black challenged an editorial-writer for the Cornell Daily Sun
to debate him in front of the Semantics class on an anti-war editorial
(the Cornell campus was routinely wracked with fire-alarm-pullings to
disrupt classes in Spring 1970 after Kent State), and proudly
announced that he was "born in Baku, Russia [sic] to English parents
but _chose_ to become an American citizen" (nothing, BTW, about Jewish
ancestry).

Obviously it's the last one. "Some [ɹ]-like articulation with lip
rounding" is no more informative than what I said myself.

> stereotype.-

[Peter T. Daniels]

On Jan 10, 5:06 pm, Adam Funk <a24...@ducksburg.com> wrote:

> On 2013-01-10, benli...@ihug.co.nz wrote:
> > On Jan 11, 1:38 am, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
> >> Yes, I am unable to explain it. If I write down my impression of what
> >> causes the distinction, you'll just mock it. If you can't hear the
> >> difference between Baba Wawa / Elmer Fudd / Barry Kripke [all of them
> >> caricatures] and Frank Muir / David Zayas, then you need to pay more
> >> attention.
>
> > It's disappointing that you can't attempt a phonetic account of the
> > difference.
> >  I would suggest that perhaps the real speakers with labialized /r/
> > use a range of different sounds, perhaps [ʋ] (labiodental
> > approximant), which the phoneticians I referred to in another post
> > seem to consider the most common British variant; perhaps [ɥ]
> > (labialized palatal approximant); or some [ɹ]-like articulation with
> > lip rounding. To the lay person these all sound like [w], so the
> > caricaturists may just use [w].
>
> > Except for my third possibility above, none of these sounds have
> > anything "rhotic" about them phonetically, except of course that they
> > take the place of /r/.
>
> Is it reasonable to suppose that "rho"-terms have two different
> meanings?  ISTM that Peter is using "rhotacism" to mean "sounding like
> [r]" whereas the rest of us are more interested in "used for /r/".

I don't think anyone would use it to mean "used for /r/." And I don't
think I used Wells's term "rhotacism" in this context, since that
refers to postvocalic [r].

[Peter T. Daniels]

I don't know what "all the previous cases" are; the three examples
that simply use [w] for /r/ are all comic caricatures -- Elmer Fudd,
Baba Wawa, and Barry Kripke.

I am, as you know perfectly well since you provided what you
considered an adequate description yourself ("[ɹ]-like articulation
with lip rounding." even though it was exactly what I had said but
with an IPA character plucked out of Character Map), not referring to
[w].

> I think some people (speech therapists?) have used "rhotacism" to mean
> something like "problem with [r]".

I've never heard that (never having consorted with speech therapists).

> This potentially conflicts with the
> long established linguistic usage to describe a sound change which
> results in an [r]. In the present case this is confusing, since, if
> there is a problem, it is that these speakers produce something which

> is _not_ an [r]. Perhaps we should call it "wotacism"?-

American /r/ is also not [r].

[Peter T. Daniels]

On Jan 10, 7:04 pm, António Marques <antonio...@sapo.pt> wrote:

> "benli...@ihug.co.nz" <benli...@ihug.co.nz> wrote:
> > On Jan 11, 1:38 am, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
> >> On Jan 10, 12:28 am, "benli...@ihug.co.nz" <benli...@ihug.co.nz>
> >> wrote:
> >>> Or is being in the media your
> >>> definition of "upper class"?
>
> >> Apparently it's not yours.

I think that was mis-snipped -- I was not saying that "being in the
media" was apparently not Ross's, but that "my" definition is not
Ross's.

> > Well, no..
>
> Where was it that I saw - not too many years ago - a discussion of the fact
> that class in the US is merely linked to economic status, quite unlike what
> happens in the rest of the World?

I didn't think it necessary to repeat that again ...

[Peter T. Daniels]

On Jan 10, 5:03 pm, Adam Funk <a24...@ducksburg.com> wrote:
> On 2013-01-10, Peter T. Daniels wrote:
>
> > On Jan 10, 12:28 am, "benli...@ihug.co.nz" <benli...@ihug.co.nz>
> > wrote:
> >> On Jan 10, 5:22 pm, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
> >> > No, only a lifetime of hearing them. You might try tracking down
> >> > audios of Max Black and Eric Blackall, professors of, respectively,
> >> > philosophy and German literature at Cornell whose classes I took.
>
> >> Neither of them "upper class" in any serious sense.
>
> > Distinguished elderly British professors are not upper class?
>
> No.  Maybe upper middle class.  None of the professors or lecturers I
> know personally speak RP either, although I'd expect that not to be
> the case at Oxbridge.  (David Crystal does speak RP, though.)

Not natively, though.

Are you saying you only know red brick professors or lecturers?

[benl...@ihug.co.nz]

No, what gave you that idea?

But there are some things one can say with some certainty. One is that
neither of the professors was born into the upper class (unlike, say,
Bertrand Russell).
Another (and this is one in which England is said to differ from
America) is that just making a lot of money, or writing best-selling
books, or being a champion at some sport, or a world-renowned scholar
(to name a few "personal accomplishments") is sufficient to make you a
member of the upper class. Even being knighted won't do it, if my
understanding is correct.

>
> BTW Max Black challenged an editorial-writer for the Cornell Daily Sun
> to debate him in front of the Semantics class on an anti-war editorial
> (the Cornell campus was routinely wracked with fire-alarm-pullings to
> disrupt classes in Spring 1970 after Kent State), and proudly
> announced that he was "born in Baku, Russia [sic] to English parents
> but _chose_ to become an American citizen" (nothing, BTW, about Jewish
> ancestry).

I believe Baku was part of Russia at the time Black was born (1909).
The Jewish ancestry is mentioned both by Wikipedia and at

http://www-history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/Biographies/Black.html

His father, who is named as "Lionel Black", could have been English
(and Jewish).

"Obviously"? So you disagree with the phoneticians who hear a
labiodental approximant? On what basis?

[benl...@ihug.co.nz]

"All the previous cases" were the non-caricatures -- real people such
as Muir, Zayas et al.

> I am, as you know perfectly well since you provided what you
> considered an adequate description yourself ("[ɹ]-like articulation
> with lip rounding." even though it was exactly what I had said but
> with an IPA character plucked out of Character Map), not referring to
> [w].

No, you do not manage to make yourself clear, particularly when the
garbled parenthetic takes up most of the sentence.

Let me try and help. I think what you are trying to say is that all
the actual people you have heard who are thought of as having wotacism
are in fact using (to quote myself) an "[ɹ]-like articulation with lip
rounding" -- which, you say, is what you meant by saying that Fudd has
"nothing of the rhotic".

> > I think some people (speech therapists?) have used "rhotacism" to mean
> > something like "problem with [r]".
>
> I've never heard that (never having consorted with speech therapists).

I know how much you enjoy calling attention to your ritual purity, but
I assure you that consorting is not required to get an idea of how
they talk.

> > This potentially conflicts with the
> > long established linguistic usage to describe a sound change which
> > results in an [r]. In the present case this is confusing, since, if
> > there is a problem, it is that these speakers produce something which
> > is _not_ an [r]. Perhaps we should call it "wotacism"?-
>
> American /r/ is also not [r].

Nor is British. You can take [r] as a cover for the entire class of
rhotic consonants. Or you can take it as a sign that I got tired of
cutting and pasting IPAs.

[Nathan Sanders]

In article
<d9c7b8a3-c00d-4c5e...@f25g2000vby.googlegroups.com>,

"Peter T. Daniels" <gram...@verizon.net> wrote:

> On Jan 10, 3:48�pm, Nathan Sanders <sand...@alum.mit.edu> wrote:
> > In article <j2n2s9xfsh....@news.ducksburg.com>,
> > �Adam Funk <a24...@ducksburg.com> wrote:
> >
> > > On 2013-01-10, Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> >
> > > > There's nothing "rhotistic" about the latter IPA symbol. There is also
> > > > nothing rhotistic about Elmer Fudd's /r/s. Compare those named just
> > > > above by Ross.
> >
> > > What's the symbol for the thing you consider a labialized /r/ then?
> >
> > Experts who know what they're talking (e.g., John Wells in _Accents of
> > English 2: The British Isles_ and Peter Trudgill in _Sociolinguistic
> > Variation and Change_) use the symbol for a labiodental approximant to
> > represent this sound in the relevant dialects.
>
> So they consider its r-ness irrelevant or uninteresting?

I don't know what you mean by "r-ness", so I can't answer this
question. Can you explain what you mean using standard phonetic
terminology, or perhaps point to an expert that does?

> Well, I suppose they're the same ones that have no graphic distinction
> for NY "can" vs. "can."

Wells uses [&] for one and [E@], [e@], [e~@], and [i@] for the other
(p.477).

If I had to pick just one to use as a broad transcription to cover the
large amount of inter- and intra-speaker variability for the
pronunciation of the second vowel, I'd go with [e@] or [i@], since
those two best conform to the IPA's principle of typographic
simplicity out of the four options Wells gives.

[benl...@ihug.co.nz]

Eh! "...is _not_ sufficient..."

[Ruud Harmsen]

Thu, 10 Jan 2013 15:01:06 -0800 (PST): "benl...@ihug.co.nz"
<benl...@ihug.co.nz> schreef/wrote:

>I think some people (speech therapists?) have used "rhotacism" to mean
>something like "problem with [r]".

Yes:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhotacism
[spoiler for GG]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhotacism#Orthoepy

[António Marques]

Peter T. Daniels wrote (11-01-2013 04:31):
> On Jan 10, 7:04 pm, António Marques <antonio...@sapo.pt> wrote:
>> "benli...@ihug.co.nz" <benli...@ihug.co.nz> wrote:
>>> On Jan 11, 1:38 am, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
>>>> On Jan 10, 12:28 am, "benli...@ihug.co.nz" <benli...@ihug.co.nz>
>>>> wrote:
>>>>> Or is being in the media your
>>>>> definition of "upper class"?
>>
>>>> Apparently it's not yours.
>
> I think that was mis-snipped -- I was not saying that "being in the
> media" was apparently not Ross's, but that "my" definition is not
> Ross's.

OK.

>>> Well, no..
>>
>> Where was it that I saw - not too many years ago - a discussion of the fact
>> that class in the US is merely linked to economic status, quite unlike what
>> happens in the rest of the World?
>
> I didn't think it necessary to repeat that again ...

You were, however, talking about a British topic, so referring to
upper-class Brits using an American view of 'class' is ambiguous. 'Brits who
would be considered upper-class in America' is longwinded, but...

Your elderly distinguished British professors were twits, or did I misread?
Did they have a natural or affected 'r'?

ObUnincludedAue: Are twit, twerp and twat all variants of the same word, or
did they just happen to converge?

[António Marques]

benl...@ihug.co.nz wrote (11-01-2013 04:55):
> On Jan 11, 5:23 pm, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
>> BTW Max Black challenged an editorial-writer for the Cornell Daily Sun
>> to debate him in front of the Semantics class on an anti-war editorial
>> (the Cornell campus was routinely wracked with fire-alarm-pullings to
>> disrupt classes in Spring 1970 after Kent State), and proudly
>> announced that he was "born in Baku, Russia [sic] to English parents
>> but _chose_ to become an American citizen" (nothing, BTW, about Jewish
>> ancestry).
>
> I believe Baku was part of Russia at the time Black was born (1909).

I think it's customary to say 'Russian Empire' (cf. 'Britain' vs 'British
Empire'). Unlike the territories which later on became part of the Russian
Federation (plus maybe the Baltics and Kazakhstan), I think the others were
never regarded as 'Russia'. (And Belarus and the Ukraine were the other
Russias.)

[Peter T. Daniels]

Since they had already achieved high social status in the US, there
would be no reason for them to affect the pronunciation; I would not
have any occasion to abserve their speech in a situation of stress.

Blackall, though, was very easy to imitate, and took irrational
offense at people coughing while he was lecturing -- "Control that
cough!" was frequently heard, and that seems a rather twitlike
behaviour.

> ObUnincludedAue: Are twit, twerp and twat all variants of the same word, or
> did they just happen to converge?

"Twerp" is American. US "twat" /twat/ is a vulgar term for female sex
organ, Br "twat" /tw&t/ seems to be a gneralized insult, "twit" is Br.

[Peter T. Daniels]

On Jan 10, 11:55 pm, "benli...@ihug.co.nz" <benli...@ihug.co.nz>

Splork! Your attempt to deny their upper-class status on the basis of
their parentage.

> But there are some things one can say with some certainty. One is that
> neither of the professors was born into the upper class (unlike, say,
> Bertrand Russell).
> Another (and this is one in which England is said to differ from
> America) is that just making a lot of money, or writing best-selling
> books, or being a champion at some sport, or a world-renowned scholar
> (to name a few "personal accomplishments") is sufficient to make you a
> member of the upper class. Even being knighted won't do it, if my
> understanding is correct.

Since both of them had left "England" decades before, that hardly
seems relevant.

> > BTW Max Black challenged an editorial-writer for the Cornell Daily Sun
> > to debate him in front of the Semantics class on an anti-war editorial
> > (the Cornell campus was routinely wracked with fire-alarm-pullings to
> > disrupt classes in Spring 1970 after Kent State), and proudly
> > announced that he was "born in Baku, Russia [sic] to English parents
> > but _chose_ to become an American citizen" (nothing, BTW, about Jewish
> > ancestry).
>
> I believe Baku was part of Russia at the time Black was born (1909).
> The Jewish ancestry is mentioned both by Wikipedia and at
>
> http://www-history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/Biographies/Black.html
>
> His father, who is named as "Lionel Black", could have been English
> (and Jewish).

Unless he was lying, his father _was_ English. I have no idea what
religion he practiced, or whether he practiced any at all.

I do not know that "the phoneticians" are referring to the same (sort
of) speakers as I am. If they are referring to Fudd, Wawa, and Kripke,
then that description is fine.

> > > stereotype.--

Usually there are some sorts of bases in fact for stereotypes.

[Peter T. Daniels]

On Jan 11, 6:45 am, António Marques <antonio...@sapo.pt> wrote:

Remember we were embroiled in both Cold War and Vietnam (the topic of
the debate), so he may have been generalizing for rhetoricl effect.

(Recall, also, that in 1970 philosophical "semantics" -- which was
recommended, but not required, for linguistics majors -- looked almost
nothing like the linguistic semantics that was beginning to be fought
over among Chomsky's students and had not yet seen Montague's
contributions. I don't think that was even where we learned about
Austin and speech acts.)

[Peter T. Daniels]

On Jan 11, 1:19 am, Nathan Sanders <sand...@alum.mit.edu> wrote:
> In article

> <d9c7b8a3-c00d-4c5e-a3e9-b073e8f45...@f25g2000vby.googlegroups.com>,

>  "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
> > On Jan 10, 3:48 pm, Nathan Sanders <sand...@alum.mit.edu> wrote:
> > > In article <j2n2s9xfsh....@news.ducksburg.com>,
> > >  Adam Funk <a24...@ducksburg.com> wrote:
> > > > On 2013-01-10, Peter T. Daniels wrote:
>
> > > > > There's nothing "rhotistic" about the latter IPA symbol. There is also
> > > > > nothing rhotistic about Elmer Fudd's /r/s. Compare those named just
> > > > > above by Ross.
>
> > > > What's the symbol for the thing you consider a labialized /r/ then?
>
> > > Experts who know what they're talking (e.g., John Wells in _Accents of
> > > English 2: The British Isles_ and Peter Trudgill in _Sociolinguistic
> > > Variation and Change_) use the symbol for a labiodental approximant to
> > > represent this sound in the relevant dialects.
>
> > So they consider its r-ness irrelevant or uninteresting?
>
> I don't know what you mean by "r-ness", so I can't answer this
> question.  Can you explain what you mean using standard phonetic
> terminology, or perhaps point to an expert that does?

Jeez. You go away for two months and come back to once again zoom
right to a message of mine to pick, pick, pick without consulting the
previous discussion, which includes Ross's equally vague description
of what I am referring to.

Read the damn thread.

> > Well, I suppose they're the same ones that have no graphic distinction
> > for NY "can" vs. "can."
>
> Wells uses [&] for one and [E@], [e@], [e~@], and [i@] for the other
> (p.477).
>
> If I had to pick just one to use as a broad transcription to cover the
> large amount of inter- and intra-speaker variability for the
> pronunciation of the second vowel, I'd go with [e@] or [i@], since
> those two best conform to the IPA's principle of typographic
> simplicity out of the four options Wells gives.

That's very nice, but the sound in question isn't a diphthong.
Moreover, it's the sound usually used for both by Chicagoans who do
not have the distinction, suggesting that the one notated /eh/ by
Smith-Trager is the one that ought to have the [&] symbol (IPA
principle to use the simpler notation for the more common sound, in
this case the neutralization).

Dale Terbeek, my phonetics professor, was a Ladefoged student and was
unable to provide symbols for (possibly unable to hear) the
distinction.

[Adam Funk]

On 2013-01-10, Nathan Sanders wrote:

> In article <j2n2s9x...@news.ducksburg.com>,

> Adam Funk <a24...@ducksburg.com> wrote:
>
>> On 2013-01-10, Peter T. Daniels wrote:
>>
>> >
>> > There's nothing "rhotistic" about the latter IPA symbol. There is also
>> > nothing rhotistic about Elmer Fudd's /r/s. Compare those named just
>> > above by Ross.
>>
>> What's the symbol for the thing you consider a labialized /r/ then?
>
> Experts who know what they're talking (e.g., John Wells in _Accents of
> English 2: The British Isles_ and Peter Trudgill in _Sociolinguistic
> Variation and Change_) use the symbol for a labiodental approximant to
> represent this sound in the relevant dialects.

Thanks. Now what's the difference between a "real" labialized /r/ &
an affected one?


--
A man can't just sit around.
--- Larry Walters

[Adam Funk]

For the most part. On further reflection, though, I can think of just
a few people I know (not so well) who speak varieties of RP or close
approximations.


--
Classical Greek lent itself to the promulgation of a rich culture,
indeed, to Western civilization. Computer languages bring us
doorbells that chime with thirty-two tunes, alt.sex.bestiality, and
Tetris clones. (Stoll 1995)