Re: square meters Re: Olympic question(s)

[Robert Bannister]

On 21/09/12 12:45 PM, Joachim Pense wrote:
> Am 21.09.2012 05:25, schrieb Peter T. Daniels:
>> On Sep 20, 8:35 pm, Robert Bannister <rob...@clubtelco.com> wrote:
>
>>> And for us non-rhotics, Bach is all too often "bark" which also has the
>>> wrong vowel.
>>
>> If you're non-rhotic, how can you insert an r there?
>>
>
> To lengthen the vowel?
>
> Joachim

To change quality or at least to define the quality of the a as the
"father/farther" vowel.

I suppose some of us do think of this vowel as being "long" as opposed
to the "short" a in "fat", but the term can be misleading.

--
Robert Bannister

[Robert Bannister]

On 21/09/12 11:11 PM, António Marques wrote:
> Peter T. Daniels wrote (21-09-2012 14:56):
>> On Sep 21, 9:03 am, António Marques <antonio...@sapo.pt> wrote:
>>> Adam Funk wrote (21-09-2012 13:58):
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>> On 2012-09-21, Peter T. Daniels wrote:

>>>
>>>>> On Sep 21, 12:45 am, Joachim Pense <s...@pense-mainz.eu> wrote:
>>>>>> Am 21.09.2012 05:25, schrieb Peter T. Daniels:
>>>
>>>>>>> On Sep 20, 8:35 pm, Robert Bannister <rob...@clubtelco.com> wrote:
>>>>>>>> And for us non-rhotics, Bach is all too often "bark" which also
>>>>>>>> has the
>>>>>>>> wrong vowel.
>>>
>>>>>>> If you're non-rhotic, how can you insert an r there?
>>>
>>>>>> To lengthen the vowel?
>>>

>>>>> How does [r] make a vowel longer?
>>>
>>>>> Longer than what?
>>>
>>>> I think Robert means "insert an 'r'" (i.e., as if adding a written
>>>> 'r'), not "insert an [r] sound".
>>>
>>> Robert didn't mention 'insert'. He used the label 'bark' to denote a
>>> vowel,
>>> just as people often talk about 'Mary'.-
>>
>> How is "Bach is .... 'bark'" not inserting an r?
>
> Because 'bark' is a label for a vowel, not the word 'bark'.
>
>> The vowel in Mary does not contain an [r], it precedes one. But for a
>> non-rhotic, the vowel in bark neither contains nor precedes one, so
>> what is gained by including one in the code for it?
>
> The word 'bark' in Robert's dialect is of the form [bVk], where V is the
> vowel Robert is trying to refer to.
> Of course, unless its value is well known to other people, he won't get
> very far with it.
>

/A/ please, not /V/ - that would be the vowel of "buck", I think.

--
Robert Bannister

[Robert Bannister]

On 22/09/12 4:53 AM, Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> On Sep 21, 2:43 pm, Peter Brooks <peter.h.m.bro...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Sep 21, 4:37 pm, "Peter Duncanson [BrE]" <m...@peterduncanson.net>
>> wrote:> On Fri, 21 Sep 2012 04:23:39 -0700 (PDT), "Peter T. Daniels"
>>
>>> In effect, to a non-rhotic speaker "ar" is a vowel.
>>
>> I think that's an excellent way of putting it. I hadn't thought of it
>> that way, but it makes sense. It explains why it's so particularly
>> jarring when somebody goes and put a heavy 'r' sound in the middle of
>> a word like 'bark'. It has, at times, made me think that it's an
>> affectation - as if somebody read English and put heavy underlining
>> under each 'r' to be sure to make every one sound. This isn't true of
>> all words, just the ones that, as you say, have, in effect, an 'r'less
>> vowel in them.
>
> Perhaps you were not aware that the _omission_ of such r's is a recent
> -- mid-19th-century or so -- phenomenon, peculiar to a small district
> in southeastern England.
>
> It is r-lessness that is the affectation.
>

Now almost everywhere in England apart from the far north and far west,
plus being the standard in all the former colonies, including parts of
New England and, for a long time, the city of New York.

I have read that that is changing and that rhoticism is taking over
everywhere in the USA, which is just as much a fad as the way the Rs
dropped out in the first place.

--
Robert Bannister

[Robert Bannister]

On 22/09/12 6:42 AM, Evan Kirshenbaum wrote:
> Joachim Pense <sn...@pense-mainz.eu> writes:

>
>> Am 21.09.2012 22:53, schrieb Peter T. Daniels:
>>
>>>
>>> Perhaps you were not aware that the _omission_ of such r's is a recent
>>> -- mid-19th-century or so -- phenomenon, peculiar to a small district
>>> in southeastern England.
>>>
>>> It is r-lessness that is the affectation.
>>>
>>

>> How did it spread to New York and the South?
>
> By boat. The American dialects that are non-rhotic are those that had
> more contact (commercial and otherwise) with England, while the rhotic
> dialects were those further inland, who remained more conservative.
> The places with rhotic dialects also tended to have a greater number
> of immigrants from Scotland, Ireland and, I believe, the north of
> England.
>

I'm not convinced the immigrants affected it that all that much.
Australia has always had a very large percentage of people of Irish
ancestry, but once they lost their accent, they lost their Rs just like
everyone else. I suspect that just as dropping the R became fashionable
in England, stressing it became fashionable in America.

--
Robert Bannister

[Robert Bannister]

On 22/09/12 4:51 AM, Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> On Sep 21, 10:37 am, "Peter Duncanson [BrE]" <m...@peterduncanson.net>

> wrote:
>> On Fri, 21 Sep 2012 04:23:39 -0700 (PDT), "Peter T. Daniels"
>>

>> <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
>>> On Sep 21, 12:45 am, Joachim Pense <s...@pense-mainz.eu> wrote:
>>>> Am 21.09.2012 05:25, schrieb Peter T. Daniels:
>>
>>>>> On Sep 20, 8:35 pm, Robert Bannister <rob...@clubtelco.com> wrote:
>>>>>> And for us non-rhotics, Bach is all too often "bark" which also has the
>>>>>> wrong vowel.
>>
>>>>> If you're non-rhotic, how can you insert an r there?
>>
>>>> To lengthen the vowel?
>>
>>> How does [r] make a vowel longer?
>>
>>> Longer than what?
>>

>> Longer than a shorter vowel.
>>
>> To a non-rhotic BrE-speaker "ar" represents the sound he/she uses when
>> saying the "ar" in words such as park, bark and lark: /A/. That is a
>> longer vowel than in pack, back and lack: /a/. A non-rhotic speaker is
>
> The difference in quality is far more salient than the difference in
> quantity.
>
>> quite likely to use "ar" to represent /A/ without thinking that this
>> might be confusing to those people who sound their "r"s.

>>
>> In effect, to a non-rhotic speaker "ar" is a vowel.
>

> But Robert has _been_ through the entire discussion, and so can no
> longer be among those who are not aware of the confusion, but
> apparently learned nothing from it.
>

I knew you would rise to the bait, but at the same time, we have no word
"bahk" in English, and of course I knew you would know exactly what I
meant even though you would protest and have done so.

--
Robert Bannister

[Robert Bannister]

On 22/09/12 4:36 AM, Jerry Friedman wrote:
> On Sep 21, 10:00 am, Joachim Pense <s...@pense-mainz.eu> wrote:

>> Am 21.09.2012 13:23, schrieb Peter T. Daniels:
>> > On Sep 21, 12:45 am, Joachim Pense <s...@pense-mainz.eu> wrote:
>> >> Am 21.09.2012 05:25, schrieb Peter T. Daniels:
>> >>
>> >>> On Sep 20, 8:35 pm, Robert Bannister <rob...@clubtelco.com> wrote:
>> >>>> And for us non-rhotics, Bach is all too often "bark" which also
>> has the
>> >>>> wrong vowel.
>> >>
>> >>> If you're non-rhotic, how can you insert an r there?
>> >>
>> >> To lengthen the vowel?
>> >
>> > How does [r] make a vowel longer?
>> >
>> > Longer than what?
>> >
>>

>> Longer than the vowel in "duck". (/dʌk/). OK, the vowel quality is
>> different (/bɑːk/), but the nonrothic r-spelling, like the rhotic
>> h-spelling (Bark, Bahk) signifies a long a, doesn't it?
>
> It does. I'm betting he was comparing it to the vowel in "back", but
> only Rob can tell us.

Of course. We must be careful comparing German and English. German
"Back" sounds a lot more like English "buck", but English "back" is not
"beck" either, even though a lot of Germans pronounce it that way.


--
Robert Bannister

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

On Sep 22, 11:17 am, Joachim Pense <s...@pense-mainz.eu> wrote:
> Am 21.09.2012 23:50, schrieb benli...@ihug.co.nz:

>
> > On Sep 22, 9:10 am, Joachim Pense <s...@pense-mainz.eu> wrote:
> >> Am 21.09.2012 22:53, schrieb Peter T. Daniels:
>
> >>> Perhaps you were not aware that the _omission_ of such r's is a recent
> >>> -- mid-19th-century or so -- phenomenon, peculiar to a small district
> >>> in southeastern England.
>

> > Peter's dating is at least a century too late.
> > And while it may once have been "peculiar to a small district" (like
> > any sound change), it's now prevalent over most of England:
>
> I think this dating is also given in David Crystal's "Stories of English"
>
> Joachim

I'm not sure which dating you mean.

Crystal (p.467) doesn't give a very clear sense of the chronology, but
mentions John Walker as saying /r/ was "weakening" in his time.
Elsewhere I find that Walker (1791) uses <ar> to represent the vowel
of "aunt", and says that "card" is pronounced <caad>. Looks like more
than "weakening" to me.

Crystal also mentions Keats (1795-1821) rhyming "thoughts" with
"sorts" and the like -- apparently to the strong disapproval of
critics. (Arhotic speakers sometimes seem to be in a state of denial
or false consciousness about their speech, even to this day.)

More comprehensive histories point to <r>-less spellings from as early
as the 15th century indicating that /r/ was being lost before /s/.

[Robert Bannister]

On 22/09/12 8:07 AM, Evan Kirshenbaum wrote:
> Robert Bannister <rob...@clubtelco.com> writes:
>
>> On 21/09/12 1:28 PM, Evan Kirshenbaum wrote:
>>> Robert Bannister <rob...@clubtelco.com> writes:
>>>
>>>> All this talk of voicing and devoicing has had me whispering to
>>>> myself. It is amazing how clearly one seems to be able to form all
>>>> the consonants, and how distinctive they all are despite the lack
>>>> of voicing. Aspiration seems to be a lot more important that I
>>>> thought as I can clearly hear the difference in "bad hat" with
>>>> equal vowel length.
>>>
>>> When you do that experiment, make sure you have equal consonant
>>> length, as well. IIRC, not only are vowels longer before voiced
>>> consonants, but the consonants themselves are shorter. (In the
>>> case of stops, less silence before the next syllable starts.)
>>>
>>> You might also try recording yourself whispering and see whether you
>>> have the same impression when you hear yourself.
>>>
>>> Personally, even listening live, when I whisper "bad hat" trying to
>>> keep the vowels the length of the one in "bad", I hear myself saying
>>> "bad had", and when I whisper it trying to keep the vowels the length
>>> of the one in "hat", I hear myself saying "bat hat".
>>>
>>
>> Could it be that BrE aspirates Ts more noticeably than AmE?
>
> Certainly between vowels. (There's little or none in AmE...the
> voicing distinction is carried essentially entirely on the vowel.) If
> you pronounce the /h/ in "hat", I wouldn't expect you to aspirate the
> /t/ in "bat" unless you were speaking very carefully.

It was the whispering thing. If I whisper "bat hat" it is very different
from "bad hat", and the difference seem to be totally the aspirated or
palatalised t (I'm not quite sure which process is involved; the results
seem to be similar).


--
Robert Bannister

[Brian M. Scott]

On Fri, 21 Sep 2012 18:44:30 -0700 (PDT),
"benl...@ihug.co.nz" <benl...@ihug.co.nz> wrote in
<news:99137b69-ba6c-47b6...@t9g2000pbc.googlegroups.com>
in alt.usage.english,sci.lang:

[...]

Roger Lass has a good discussion of /r/-loss in _Historical
Linguistics and Language Change_. The earliest evidence for
sporadic /r/-loss is from c. 1300, though most of the
evidence for the first round of /r/-loss is from the 15th
and 16th centuries. This first round occurred in stressed
syllables before coronals, preferentially /s/, and did not
cause lengthening.

The earliest evidence for /r/-loss in weak syllables is from
the late 17th century. The first good evidence for pre-/r/
lengthening comes from the late 17th century. By the middle
of the 18th century there are clear descriptions of pre-/r/
lengthening and noticeable weakening of /r/ 'dans plusieurs
mots', and by the end of the century there is clear evidence
that the phenomenon was general enough to be stigmatized by
some. By c. 1874 (Sweet) it was very well established in
what are now the non-rhotic dialects, but not quite
universal.

Brian

[Peter T. Daniels]

On Sep 21, 8:34 pm, Robert Bannister <rob...@clubtelco.com> wrote:

> On 21/09/12 11:25 AM, Peter T. Daniels wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
> > On Sep 20, 8:35 pm, Robert Bannister <rob...@clubtelco.com> wrote:

> >> On 20/09/12 12:09 PM, Peter T. Daniels wrote:
>
> >>> On Sep 19, 8:10 pm, Robert Bannister <rob...@clubtelco.com> wrote:
> >>>> On 19/09/12 10:41 PM, Peter T. Daniels wrote:
>
> >>>>> LC transliteration, the 'scholarly" version, uses kh.
>
> >>>> When cornered, the Englishman will scream "Scottish loch", as if this
> >>>> makes it magically English.
>
> >>> We usually use "Bach" as the standard example. "Loch" as in Ness
> >>> Monster is usually just Lock -- but "Loch Lomond" has [x].

>
> >> And for us non-rhotics, Bach is all too often "bark" which also has the
> >> wrong vowel.
>
> > If you're non-rhotic, how can you insert an r there?
>

> Because an r changes the vowel sound. That is precisely the function of
> r after a vowel for non-rhotics. It's a bit like the way an e in
> vowel+consonant+e changes the preceding vowel - "magic letter".

You are claiming that a letter changes a sound. That's nonsense.

The r in your dialect marks the existence of a different vowel (it
doesn't change it), but for most people in the world (not just the
English-speaking world), it marks the presence of an r-sound.

[Evan Kirshenbaum]

We don't stress it. We just pronounce it and never stopped
pronouncing it. My impression is that Australia was settled largely
initially by English who came over after the loss of rhoticity was
common in England. The Irish came into that environment, but didn't
affect it much and assimilated. America was settled by rhotic
Englishmen (as pretty much all of them were). When the fad of
dropping /r/ happened around London, those with the most contact with
the south of England--southerners who went there a lot and port cities
in the north, who traded with them, followed suit, while the rest did
not. Scottish, Irish, and northern English immigrants, who were
rhotic, immigrated to places where the Americans had less contact with
London and who therefore remained rhotic. They didn't make the
Americans pronounce their /r/s, but they reinforced the notion that
that was how people in Britain talked.

--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
Still with HP Labs |Other computer companies have spent
SF Bay Area (1982-) |15 years working on fault-tolerant
Chicago (1964-1982) |computers. Microsoft has spent
|its time more fruitfully, working
evan.kir...@gmail.com |on fault-tolerant *users*.

http://www.kirshenbaum.net/

[Hans Aberg]

On 2012/09/22 02:46, Robert Bannister wrote:
> On 22/09/12 4:53 AM, Peter T. Daniels wrote:
>> On Sep 21, 2:43 pm, Peter Brooks <peter.h.m.bro...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> On Sep 21, 4:37 pm, "Peter Duncanson [BrE]" <m...@peterduncanson.net>
>>> wrote:> On Fri, 21 Sep 2012 04:23:39 -0700 (PDT), "Peter T. Daniels"
>>>
>>>> In effect, to a non-rhotic speaker "ar" is a vowel.
>>>
>>> I think that's an excellent way of putting it. I hadn't thought of it
>>> that way, but it makes sense. It explains why it's so particularly
>>> jarring when somebody goes and put a heavy 'r' sound in the middle of
>>> a word like 'bark'. It has, at times, made me think that it's an
>>> affectation - as if somebody read English and put heavy underlining
>>> under each 'r' to be sure to make every one sound. This isn't true of
>>> all words, just the ones that, as you say, have, in effect, an 'r'less
>>> vowel in them.
>>
>> Perhaps you were not aware that the _omission_ of such r's is a recent
>> -- mid-19th-century or so -- phenomenon, peculiar to a small district
>> in southeastern England.
>>
>> It is r-lessness that is the affectation.
>>
>

> Now almost everywhere in England apart from the far north...

Not even that nowadays (see below).

> ...and far west,

> plus being the standard in all the former colonies, including parts of
> New England and, for a long time, the city of New York.

There are some maps here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhotic_and_non-rhotic_accents

[R H Draney]

Peter T. Daniels filted:

>
>On Sep 21, 8:34=A0pm, Robert Bannister <rob...@clubtelco.com> wrote:
>>
>> Because an r changes the vowel sound. That is precisely the function of
>> r after a vowel for non-rhotics. It's a bit like the way an e in
>> vowel+consonant+e changes the preceding vowel - "magic letter".
>
>You are claiming that a letter changes a sound. That's nonsense.

Says you....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EVC9TayQIh8

....r


--
Me? Sarcastic?
Yeah, right.

[Joachim Pense]

Am 22.09.2012 03:44, schrieb benl...@ihug.co.nz:
> On Sep 22, 11:17 am, Joachim Pense <s...@pense-mainz.eu> wrote:

>> I think this dating is also given in David Crystal's "Stories of English"
>>
>> Joachim
>
> I'm not sure which dating you mean.
>
> Crystal (p.467) doesn't give a very clear sense of the chronology, but
> mentions John Walker as saying /r/ was "weakening" in his time.
> Elsewhere I find that Walker (1791) uses <ar> to represent the vowel
> of "aunt", and says that "card" is pronounced <caad>. Looks like more
> than "weakening" to me.
>

So I probably confused that in my memory. I now recall vaguely that he
mentions that in the early nineteenth century arhoticism was still
deprecated, but a few decades later it became the "official"standard.

Joachim

[Joachim Pense]

Am 22.09.2012 02:50, schrieb Robert Bannister:

>
> I'm not convinced the immigrants affected it that all that much.
> Australia has always had a very large percentage of people of Irish
> ancestry, but once they lost their accent, they lost their Rs just like
> everyone else. I suspect that just as dropping the R became fashionable
> in England, stressing it became fashionable in America.
>

But isn't/wasn't the rhotic variety the prestige accent in New York?

Joachim

[Peter Duncanson [BrE]]

That depends on how we understand "changes the vowel sound". To the
non-specialist, that is, almost all native speakers of English, "changes
the vowel sound" means "changes the way the written letter should be
pronounced".

> but for most people in the world (not just the
>English-speaking world), it marks the presence of an r-sound.

That deals with "ar". An alternative representation of the same vowel
sound that works better for rhotics is "ah". Does the "h" mark the
presence of an h-sound.


--
Peter Duncanson, UK
(in alt.usage.english)

[Peter T. Daniels]

They didn't "lose" their Irish accent. They took on an Australian
accent.

[Peter T. Daniels]

On Sep 21, 10:33 pm, "Brian M. Scott" <b.sc...@csuohio.edu> wrote:
> On Fri, 21 Sep 2012 18:44:30 -0700 (PDT),

> "benli...@ihug.co.nz" <benli...@ihug.co.nz> wrote in

Thus, as I said in the first place, mid-19th century. Obviously it had
to start earlier in order to have spread and become prestigious!

[Peter T. Daniels]

On Sep 22, 6:24 am, "Peter Duncanson [BrE]" <m...@peterduncanson.net>
wrote:

Of course not, since /h/ does not occur postvocalically in English.
Its allophone [N] ("ng") occurs in that position.

[Peter T. Daniels]

Of course _I_ knew what you meant, but millions of people (such as the
writers at TV Guide) would _not_ know what you meant, so that "Sade"
was pronounced with an [r] on hundreds of radio stations for who-knows-
how-long.

[Peter T. Daniels]

On Sep 21, 8:34 pm, Robert Bannister <rob...@clubtelco.com> wrote:

> On 21/09/12 11:25 AM, Peter T. Daniels wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
> > On Sep 20, 8:35 pm, Robert Bannister <rob...@clubtelco.com> wrote:

> >> On 20/09/12 12:09 PM, Peter T. Daniels wrote:
>
> >>> On Sep 19, 8:10 pm, Robert Bannister <rob...@clubtelco.com> wrote:
> >>>> On 19/09/12 10:41 PM, Peter T. Daniels wrote:
>
> >>>>> LC transliteration, the 'scholarly" version, uses kh.
>
> >>>> When cornered, the Englishman will scream "Scottish loch", as if this
> >>>> makes it magically English.
>
> >>> We usually use "Bach" as the standard example. "Loch" as in Ness
> >>> Monster is usually just Lock -- but "Loch Lomond" has [x].
>

> >> And for us non-rhotics, Bach is all too often "bark" which also has the
> >> wrong vowel.
>
> > If you're non-rhotic, how can you insert an r there?
>

> Because an r changes the vowel sound. That is precisely the function of
> r after a vowel for non-rhotics. It's a bit like the way an e in
> vowel+consonant+e changes the preceding vowel - "magic letter".

"Helping vowel."

[Brian M. Scott]

On Sat, 22 Sep 2012 04:58:27 -0700 (PDT), "Peter T. Daniels"
<gram...@verizon.net> wrote in
<news:f5790991-907e-4ada...@a11g2000yqb.googlegroups.com>
in alt.usage.english,sci.lang:

You are misrepresenting your earlier statement. You wrote:

> Perhaps you were not aware that the _omission_ of such
> r's is a recent -- mid-19th-century or so -- phenomenon,

This statement is demonstrably false. There was widespread
omission a century earlier, and you said nothing about
prestige.

> peculiar to a small district in southeastern England.

This statement is ridiculously false.

> It is r-lessness that is the affectation.

Only for those who don't have it natively; millions do have
it natively. Your Anglophobia is on display again.

[Peter T. Daniels]

On Sep 22, 8:27 am, "Brian M. Scott" <b.sc...@csuohio.edu> wrote:
> On Sat, 22 Sep 2012 04:58:27 -0700 (PDT), "Peter T. Daniels"

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

You don't need to flaunt your membership in the nitpickers' club. My
statement was exactly appropriate for its context.

Maybe now that you're retired from professoring, you can donate some
time to tutoring children who are behind in arithmetic, algebra, or
geometry. Would you try to introduce them to Foundations of
Mathematics when what they need to do is memorize the quadratic
formula, or give a proof of the Pythagorean Theorem?

> There was widespread
> omission a century earlier, and you said nothing about
> prestige.
>
> >   peculiar to a small district in southeastern England.
>
> This statement is ridiculously false.
>
> >   It is r-lessness that is the affectation.
>
> Only for those who don't have it natively; millions do have

> it natively.  Your Anglophobia is on display again.-

My defense of the English language against upper-class corruptions.
(Have you _heard_ the younger generation of the Royal Family replacing
their final consonants with glottal stops?? On top of omitting their
r's, soon they'll have no consonants left.)

[Arnaud F.]

Le samedi 22 septembre 2012 14:37:24 UTC+2, Peter T. Daniels a écrit :

>
> (Have you _heard_ the younger generation of the Royal Family replacing
>
> their final consonants with glottal stops?? On top of omitting their
>
> r's, soon they'll have no consonants left.)

***

They spent too much holiday time in Hawai.

They'll end up with a/u/i and h/w.

A.

[Jerry Friedman]

On Sep 22, 3:25 am, Joachim Pense <s...@pense-mainz.eu> wrote:
> Am 22.09.2012 01:05, schrieb Christian Weisgerber:
> > Joachim Pense  <s...@pense-mainz.eu> wrote:
>
> >>> But to most of the world of English-speakers, it signifies something
> >>> quite else.
>
> >> Can one really say "quite else"?
>
> > Yes.

It's rare, though. Here's an ngram search with "something quite
different" for comparison:

http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=something+quite+else%2Csomething+quite+different&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=0&smoothing=3

http://snipurl.com/252swob

> And "Something quite else" means the same as "something quite different"?

The prescriptivist Theodore Bernstein commented on "something quite
else", using the word "crudely":

http://books.google.com/books?id=g532LAQ8rOUC&pg=PA129&lpg=PA129

--
Jerry Friedman

[Jerry Friedman]

On Sep 22, 8:34 am, Jerry Friedman <jerry_fried...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> On Sep 22, 3:25 am, Joachim Pense <s...@pense-mainz.eu> wrote:
> > Am 22.09.2012 01:05, schrieb Christian Weisgerber:
> > > Joachim Pense  <s...@pense-mainz.eu> wrote:
>
> > >>> But to most of the world of English-speakers, it signifies something
> > >>>quite else.
>
> > >> Can one really say "quite else"?
>
> > > Yes.
>
> It's rare, though.  Here's an ngram search with "something quite
> different" for comparison:
>

> http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=something+quite+else%2Cs...
>
> http://snipurl.com/252swob

A better comparison would be with "something else entirely".

--
Jerry Friedman

[Nathan Sanders]

In article
<7c044b1d-cdc7-4754...@o8g2000yqm.googlegroups.com>,

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

> (Have you _heard_ the younger generation of the Royal Family replacing
> their final consonants with glottal stops?? On top of omitting their
> r's, soon they'll have no consonants left.)

That doesn't seem to have hindered French.

Nathan

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

[Nathan Sanders]

In article
<befcac3c-b38b-4d2d...@e14g2000yqm.googlegroups.com>,

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

> Of course not, since /h/ does not occur postvocalically in English.

But you have long claimed that "(tin) can" is /kehn/, and have even
explicitly called that /h/ "postvocalic":

"in New York they are distinct and contrast at least in can /kæn/ 'be
able' vs. /kehn/ (those Smith-Tragerian postvocalic h's have at least
one legitimate use!) 'tin container'"

<https://groups.google.com/group/sci.lang/msg/769530b8463aadf6>

Are you no longer a fan of the Smith-Trager phonemecization?

[Peter T. Daniels]

On Sep 22, 11:44 am, Nathan Sanders <sand...@alum.mit.edu> wrote:
> In article
> <7c044b1d-cdc7-4754-a2ec-cb3dc6960...@o8g2000yqm.googlegroups.com>,

>  "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
>
> > (Have you _heard_ the younger generation of the Royal Family replacing
> > their final consonants with glottal stops?? On top of omitting their
> > r's, soon they'll have no consonants left.)
>
> That doesn't seem to have hindered French.

Oh yeah? What does /u/ mean?

[Peter T. Daniels]

On Sep 22, 12:38 pm, Nathan Sanders <sand...@alum.mit.edu> wrote:
> In article

> <befcac3c-b38b-4d2d-96d4-c7941c44f...@e14g2000yqm.googlegroups.com>,

>  "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
>
> > Of course not, since /h/ does not occur postvocalically in English.
>
> But you have long claimed that "(tin) can" is /kehn/, and have even
> explicitly called that /h/ "postvocalic":
>
> "in New York they are distinct and contrast at least in can /kæn/ 'be
> able' vs. /kehn/ (those Smith-Tragerian postvocalic h's have at least
> one legitimate use!) 'tin container'"
>
> <https://groups.google.com/group/sci.lang/msg/769530b8463aadf6>
>
> Are you no longer a fan of the Smith-Trager phonemecization?

The biliteral syllabic nuclei are not compounds of the phonemes
represented by the letters individually. They are just that --
syllabic nuclei, some monophthongs, some diphthongs, that pattern
alike.

(Or did you imagine there's a stretch of voiceless vowel in the
diphthongs so symbolized?)

No comment on [N] being an allophone of /h/?

[Peter Duncanson [BrE]]

On Sat, 22 Sep 2012 05:37:23 -0700 (PDT), "Peter T. Daniels"
<gram...@verizon.net> wrote:

>My defense of the English language against upper-class corruptions.
>(Have you _heard_ the younger generation of the Royal Family replacing
>their final consonants with glottal stops?? On top of omitting their
>r's, soon they'll have no consonants left.)

They are just fitting in with the lower classes.

[Nathan Sanders]

In article
<560184ce-6b8c-4a78...@o8g2000yqm.googlegroups.com>,

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

In what context?

Or do you think people communicate without context?

[Nathan Sanders]

In article
<4658e279-c8bc-4715...@r7g2000yqa.googlegroups.com>,

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

> On Sep 22, 12:38 pm, Nathan Sanders <sand...@alum.mit.edu> wrote:
> > In article
> > <befcac3c-b38b-4d2d-96d4-c7941c44f...@e14g2000yqm.googlegroups.com>,
> >  "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
> >
> > > Of course not, since /h/ does not occur postvocalically in English.
> >
> > But you have long claimed that "(tin) can" is /kehn/, and have even
> > explicitly called that /h/ "postvocalic":
> >
> > "in New York they are distinct and contrast at least in can /kæn/ 'be
> > able' vs. /kehn/ (those Smith-Tragerian postvocalic h's have at least
> > one legitimate use!) 'tin container'"
> >
> > <https://groups.google.com/group/sci.lang/msg/769530b8463aadf6>
> >
> > Are you no longer a fan of the Smith-Trager phonemecization?
>
> The biliteral syllabic nuclei are not compounds of the phonemes
> represented by the letters individually. They are just that --
> syllabic nuclei, some monophthongs, some diphthongs, that pattern
> alike.

Nowhere in that paragraph do you directly address
either"postvocalic(ally)" or "h".

> (Or did you imagine there's a stretch of voiceless vowel in the
> diphthongs so symbolized?)

I imagined that when you said "postvocalic h's", you meant it.

> No comment on [N] being an allophone of /h/?

What's to comment on? I've given you my opinion on this very topic at
least once before. There's nothing stopping you from reducing the
number of phonemes by making your analysis more and more abstract. As
I have pointed out numerous times (and as was pointed out by Chao, who
famously discussed the very case you're talking about), there can be
multiple different phonemic analyses, depending on your goal.

[Nathan Sanders]

In article <sanders-ECF82F...@free.teranews.com>,

Of course, there are some problems with this analysis anyway.

The basic idea, for those who aren't familiar, is that [h] and [N]
never seem to show in the same environment; they have complementary
distribution with each other, so instead of positing two separate
phonemes /h/ and /N/, you can just posit one phoneme that is
pronounced [h] at the beginning of words (habitual) and before a
stressed vowel, whether primary (ahead) or secondary (mohawk), and is
pronounced [N] at the end of words (hang), before consonants (bank),
and before unstressed vowels (hangar).

However, in "vehicle" (where the relevant position is medial and
before an unstressed vowel for many speakers), we would expect [N] to
show up. But no native speaker ever has any urge whatsoever to
pronounce this word as "ve[N]icle". Instead, the usual pronunciation
is either "ve[]icle" or "ve[h]icle".

And of course, we know that "vehicle" has the relevant phoneme, the
one that is pronounced [h] before stressed vowels, because we get [h]
in related words where the stress shifts, like "ve[h]icular".

See also "annihiliate/nihility", "prehistoric/historic",
"prohibition/prohibit", etc., which never get [N] in the first word,
despite having [h] in the second.

[Trond Engen]

Nathan Sanders:

> In article
> <7c044b1d-cdc7-4754...@o8g2000yqm.googlegroups.com>,
> "Peter T. Daniels" <gram...@verizon.net> wrote:
>
>> (Have you _heard_ the younger generation of the Royal Family replacing
>> their final consonants with glottal stops?? On top of omitting their
>> r's, soon they'll have no consonants left.)
>
> That doesn't seem to have hindered French.

Or the Danish.

--
Trond Engen

[Adam Funk]

On 2012-09-21, Peter T. Daniels wrote:

> On Sep 21, 9:00 am, Adam Funk <a24...@ducksburg.com> wrote:
>> On 2012-09-21, Peter T. Daniels wrote:

>>
>> > On Sep 21, 12:45 am, Joachim Pense <s...@pense-mainz.eu> wrote:
>> >> Am 21.09.2012 05:25, schrieb Peter T. Daniels:
>>

>> >> > On Sep 20, 8:35 pm, Robert Bannister <rob...@clubtelco.com> wrote:
>> >> >> And for us non-rhotics, Bach is all too often "bark" which also has the
>> >> >> wrong vowel.
>>
>> >> > If you're non-rhotic, how can you insert an r there?
>>

>> >> To lengthen the vowel?
>>
>> > How does [r] make a vowel longer?
>>
>> > Longer than what?
>>

>> I think Robert means "insert an 'r'" (i.e., as if adding a written
>> 'r'), not "insert an [r] sound".
>
> Apparently having overlooked the entire discussion of "Sade" and its
> implications.
>
> Longer than what?


See "for us non-rhotics" up there? Robert's assuming an audience
smarter than the average TV Guide reader.


--
But the government always tries to coax well-known writers into the
Establishment; it makes them feel educated. [Robert Graves]

[Nathan Sanders]

In article <k3l60q$ikc$2...@dont-email.me>,

I almost mentioned them too, along with the Brazilians.

[Adam Funk]

On 2012-09-21, Peter T. Daniels wrote:

> On Sep 21, 2:43 pm, Peter Brooks <peter.h.m.bro...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Sep 21, 4:37 pm, "Peter Duncanson [BrE]" <m...@peterduncanson.net>
>> wrote:> On Fri, 21 Sep 2012 04:23:39 -0700 (PDT), "Peter T. Daniels"

>>
>> > In effect, to a non-rhotic speaker "ar" is a vowel.
>>

>> I think that's an excellent way of putting it. I hadn't thought of it
>> that way, but it makes sense. It explains why it's so particularly
>> jarring when somebody goes and put a heavy 'r' sound in the middle of
>> a word like 'bark'. It has, at times, made me think that it's an
>> affectation - as if somebody read English and put heavy underlining
>> under each 'r' to be sure to make every one sound. This isn't true of
>> all words, just the ones that, as you say, have, in effect, an 'r'less
>> vowel in them.

>
> Perhaps you were not aware that the _omission_ of such r's is a recent

> -- mid-19th-century or so -- phenomenon, peculiar to a small district
> in southeastern England.
>

> It is r-lessness that is the affectation.

When are you going to take that remedial linguistics 101 course where
they re-teach that "all dialects have equal merit"?


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

[Adam Funk]

Hmm, so what's wrong with a "helping consonant" in some dialects?


--
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

[Adam Funk]

On 2012-09-21, Peter T. Daniels wrote:

> On Sep 21, 10:37 am, "Peter Duncanson [BrE]" <m...@peterduncanson.net>

> wrote:

>> Longer than a shorter vowel.
>>
>> To a non-rhotic BrE-speaker "ar" represents the sound he/she uses when
>> saying the "ar" in words such as park, bark and lark: /A/. That is a
>> longer vowel than in pack, back and lack: /a/. A non-rhotic speaker is
>
> The difference in quality is far more salient than the difference in
> quantity.
>
>> quite likely to use "ar" to represent /A/ without thinking that this
>> might be confusing to those people who sound their "r"s.
>>

>> In effect, to a non-rhotic speaker "ar" is a vowel.
>

> But Robert has _been_ through the entire discussion, and so can no
> longer be among those who are not aware of the confusion, but
> apparently learned nothing from it.

same to you


--
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

[Peter T. Daniels]

On Sep 22, 3:01 pm, Nathan Sanders <sand...@alum.mit.edu> wrote:

> Nowhere in that paragraph do you directly address
> either"postvocalic(ally)" or "h".

For anyone but you, it wasn't necessary. They (the aue'ers) knew
exactly what I was talking about.

[Peter T. Daniels]

On Sep 22, 4:45 pm, Adam Funk <a24...@ducksburg.com> wrote:
> On 2012-09-22, Peter T. Daniels wrote:
>
> > On Sep 21, 8:34 pm, Robert Bannister <rob...@clubtelco.com> wrote:
> >> On 21/09/12 11:25 AM, Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> >> > On Sep 20, 8:35 pm, Robert Bannister <rob...@clubtelco.com> wrote:
> >> >> And for us non-rhotics, Bach is all too often "bark" which also has the
> >> >> wrong vowel.
>
> >> > If you're non-rhotic, how can you insert an r there?
>
> >> Because an r changes the vowel sound. That is precisely the function of
> >> r after a vowel for non-rhotics. It's a bit like the way an e in
> >> vowel+consonant+e changes the preceding vowel - "magic letter".
>
> > "Helping vowel."
>
> Hmm, so what's wrong with a "helping consonant" in some dialects?

(a) No one calls anything that and (b) in the majority of dialects, it
simply stands for itself, i.e. <r> = [r].

[Robert Bannister]

On 22/09/12 10:33 AM, Brian M. Scott wrote:
> On Fri, 21 Sep 2012 18:44:30 -0700 (PDT),

> "benl...@ihug.co.nz" <benl...@ihug.co.nz> wrote in

> <news:99137b69-ba6c-47b6...@t9g2000pbc.googlegroups.com>
> in alt.usage.english,sci.lang:
>
> [...]
>
> Roger Lass has a good discussion of /r/-loss in _Historical
> Linguistics and Language Change_. The earliest evidence for
> sporadic /r/-loss is from c. 1300, though most of the
> evidence for the first round of /r/-loss is from the 15th
> and 16th centuries. This first round occurred in stressed
> syllables before coronals, preferentially /s/, and did not
> cause lengthening.
>
> The earliest evidence for /r/-loss in weak syllables is from
> the late 17th century. The first good evidence for pre-/r/
> lengthening comes from the late 17th century. By the middle
> of the 18th century there are clear descriptions of pre-/r/
> lengthening and noticeable weakening of /r/ 'dans plusieurs
> mots', and by the end of the century there is clear evidence
> that the phenomenon was general enough to be stigmatized by
> some. By c. 1874 (Sweet) it was very well established in
> what are now the non-rhotic dialects, but not quite
> universal.

Interesting. Pity there isn't more, but I suppose only outsiders can
detect the beginnings of a sound change. The native speakers probably
don't notice any difference for a while.
--
Robert Bannister

[Robert Bannister]

On 22/09/12 12:37 PM, Evan Kirshenbaum wrote:
> Robert Bannister <rob...@clubtelco.com> writes:

>> I'm not convinced the immigrants affected it that all that
>> much. Australia has always had a very large percentage of people of
>> Irish ancestry, but once they lost their accent, they lost their Rs
>> just like everyone else. I suspect that just as dropping the R became
>> fashionable in England, stressing it became fashionable in America.
>
> We don't stress it. We just pronounce it and never stopped
> pronouncing it.

Some American dialects have a much stronger R than other rhotic English
dialects. This is very noticeable in words like "squirrel" and "terror".


My impression is that Australia was settled largely
> initially by English who came over after the loss of rhoticity was
> common in England.

If you check the convict lists - they're available, I think on-line -
you'll find a large number were Irish. More came during the potato
famine. A significant number of what are today considered Australian
folk-songs begin with leaving Liverpool or Cork or Dublin "bound for
Botany Bay", expecting streets paved with gold.
--
Robert Bannister

[Christian Weisgerber]

Brian M. Scott <b.s...@csuohio.edu> wrote:

> sporadic /r/-loss is from c. 1300, though most of the
> evidence for the first round of /r/-loss is from the 15th
> and 16th centuries. This first round occurred in stressed
> syllables before coronals, preferentially /s/, and did not
> cause lengthening.

So that's
arse > ass
curse > cuss
bars > bass (the fish, cf. German "Barsch")

Let's see... "ass" is AmE, "cuss" is AmE colloquial (dialectal,
euphemistic), and "bass" is the sole variant. Messy.

--
Christian "naddy" Weisgerber na...@mips.inka.de

[Robert Bannister]

On 22/09/12 7:55 PM, Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> On Sep 21, 8:50 pm, Robert Bannister <rob...@clubtelco.com> wrote:
>> On 22/09/12 6:42 AM, Evan Kirshenbaum wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>> Joachim Pense <s...@pense-mainz.eu> writes:

>>
>>>> Am 21.09.2012 22:53, schrieb Peter T. Daniels:
>>
>>>>> Perhaps you were not aware that the _omission_ of such r's is a recent
>>>>> -- mid-19th-century or so -- phenomenon, peculiar to a small district
>>>>> in southeastern England.
>>
>>>>> It is r-lessness that is the affectation.
>>

>>>> How did it spread to New York and the South?
>>
>>> By boat. The American dialects that are non-rhotic are those that had
>>> more contact (commercial and otherwise) with England, while the rhotic
>>> dialects were those further inland, who remained more conservative.
>>> The places with rhotic dialects also tended to have a greater number
>>> of immigrants from Scotland, Ireland and, I believe, the north of
>>> England.

>>
>> I'm not convinced the immigrants affected it that all that much.
>> Australia has always had a very large percentage of people of Irish
>> ancestry, but once they lost their accent, they lost their Rs just like
>> everyone else. I suspect that just as dropping the R became fashionable
>> in England, stressing it became fashionable in America.
>

> They didn't "lose" their Irish accent. They took on an Australian
> accent.
>

I wonder at what point the accent changed from being a slightly outdated
English accent to being an Australian one. Irish certainly influenced
the widespread pronunciation of "fillum, slowaly, blowen" (film, slowly,
blown), not forgetting the dreaded "haitch".

--
Robert Bannister

[Robert Bannister]

On 22/09/12 8:02 PM, Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> On Sep 21, 8:52 pm, Robert Bannister <rob...@clubtelco.com> wrote:

>> On 22/09/12 4:51 AM, Peter T. Daniels wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>> On Sep 21, 10:37 am, "Peter Duncanson [BrE]" <m...@peterduncanson.net>

>>> wrote:
>>>> On Fri, 21 Sep 2012 04:23:39 -0700 (PDT), "Peter T. Daniels"
>>

>>>> <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
>>>>> On Sep 21, 12:45 am, Joachim Pense <s...@pense-mainz.eu> wrote:
>>>>>> Am 21.09.2012 05:25, schrieb Peter T. Daniels:
>>

>>>>>>> On Sep 20, 8:35 pm, Robert Bannister <rob...@clubtelco.com> wrote:
>>>>>>>> And for us non-rhotics, Bach is all too often "bark" which also has the
>>>>>>>> wrong vowel.
>>
>>>>>>> If you're non-rhotic, how can you insert an r there?
>>

>>>>>> To lengthen the vowel?
>>
>>>>> How does [r] make a vowel longer?
>>
>>>>> Longer than what?
>>

>>>> Longer than a shorter vowel.
>>
>>>> To a non-rhotic BrE-speaker "ar" represents the sound he/she uses when
>>>> saying the "ar" in words such as park, bark and lark: /A/. That is a
>>>> longer vowel than in pack, back and lack: /a/. A non-rhotic speaker is
>>
>>> The difference in quality is far more salient than the difference in
>>> quantity.
>>
>>>> quite likely to use "ar" to represent /A/ without thinking that this
>>>> might be confusing to those people who sound their "r"s.
>>
>>>> In effect, to a non-rhotic speaker "ar" is a vowel.
>>
>>> But Robert has _been_ through the entire discussion, and so can no
>>> longer be among those who are not aware of the confusion, but
>>> apparently learned nothing from it.
>>

>> I knew you would rise to the bait, but at the same time, we have no word
>> "bahk" in English, and of course I knew you would know exactly what I
>> meant even though you would protest and have done so.
>
> Of course _I_ knew what you meant, but millions of people (such as the
> writers at TV Guide) would _not_ know what you meant, so that "Sade"
> was pronounced with an [r] on hundreds of radio stations for who-knows-
> how-long.
>

Which is why writers of popular magazines or similar should write for
their audience and should not be using or copying someone else's
mannerisms. I don't suppose the writers of TV guides anywhere are
renowned for their English-writing ability, but you would think they
would be able to spell out a sound that their own readership would
understand. I am guessing they copied the version with R from a British
publication.

--
Robert Bannister

[Robert Bannister]

On 22/09/12 5:25 PM, Joachim Pense wrote:
> Am 22.09.2012 01:05, schrieb Christian Weisgerber:

>> Joachim Pense <sn...@pense-mainz.eu> wrote:
>>
>>>> But to most of the world of English-speakers, it signifies something
>>>> quite else.
>>>
>>> Can one really say "quite else"?
>>
>> Yes.
>>
>

> And "Something quite else" means the same as "something quite different"?

It does, but the use of "else" or "other" in this way is somewhat
unusual. Some might find it old-fashioned.


--
Robert Bannister

[Robert Bannister]

On 22/09/12 11:12 AM, Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> On Sep 21, 8:34 pm, Robert Bannister <rob...@clubtelco.com> wrote:

>> On 21/09/12 11:25 AM, Peter T. Daniels wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>> On Sep 20, 8:35 pm, Robert Bannister <rob...@clubtelco.com> wrote:

>>>> On 20/09/12 12:09 PM, Peter T. Daniels wrote:
>>
>>>>> On Sep 19, 8:10 pm, Robert Bannister <rob...@clubtelco.com> wrote:
>>>>>> On 19/09/12 10:41 PM, Peter T. Daniels wrote:
>>
>>>>>>> LC transliteration, the 'scholarly" version, uses kh.
>>
>>>>>> When cornered, the Englishman will scream "Scottish loch", as if this
>>>>>> makes it magically English.
>>
>>>>> We usually use "Bach" as the standard example. "Loch" as in Ness
>>>>> Monster is usually just Lock -- but "Loch Lomond" has [x].

>>
>>>> And for us non-rhotics, Bach is all too often "bark" which also has the
>>>> wrong vowel.
>>
>>> If you're non-rhotic, how can you insert an r there?
>>

>> Because an r changes the vowel sound. That is precisely the function of
>> r after a vowel for non-rhotics. It's a bit like the way an e in
>> vowel+consonant+e changes the preceding vowel - "magic letter".
>

> You are claiming that a letter changes a sound. That's nonsense.
>
> The r in your dialect marks the existence of a different vowel (it
> doesn't change it), but for most people in the world (not just the
> English-speaking world), it marks the presence of an r-sound.
>

OK - "marks it", then. It's not my subject area so I'm not particular
about the wording and "marks" is clearly a better description.

The Wikipedia article on rhotic and non-rhotic accents
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhotic_and_non-rhotic_accents) indicates
that dropping an r is a lot more widespread than I had imagined,
although I did know that North Germans dropped the final r in the many
words that end in -er.

--
Robert Bannister

[Robert Bannister]

On 22/09/12 8:00 PM, Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> On Sep 22, 6:24 am, "Peter Duncanson [BrE]" <m...@peterduncanson.net>
> wrote:
>> On Fri, 21 Sep 2012 20:12:14 -0700 (PDT), "Peter T. Daniels"

>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
>>> On Sep 21, 8:34 pm, Robert Bannister <rob...@clubtelco.com> wrote:
>>>> On 21/09/12 11:25 AM, Peter T. Daniels wrote:
>>
>>>>> On Sep 20, 8:35 pm, Robert Bannister <rob...@clubtelco.com> wrote:
>>>>>> On 20/09/12 12:09 PM, Peter T. Daniels wrote:
>>
>>>>>>> On Sep 19, 8:10 pm, Robert Bannister <rob...@clubtelco.com> wrote:
>>>>>>>> On 19/09/12 10:41 PM, Peter T. Daniels wrote:
>>
>>>>>>>>> LC transliteration, the 'scholarly" version, uses kh.
>>
>>>>>>>> When cornered, the Englishman will scream "Scottish loch", as if this
>>>>>>>> makes it magically English.
>>
>>>>>>> We usually use "Bach" as the standard example. "Loch" as in Ness
>>>>>>> Monster is usually just Lock -- but "Loch Lomond" has [x].
>>
>>>>>> And for us non-rhotics, Bach is all too often "bark" which also has the
>>>>>> wrong vowel.
>>
>>>>> If you're non-rhotic, how can you insert an r there?
>>
>>>> Because an r changes the vowel sound. That is precisely the function of
>>>> r after a vowel for non-rhotics. It's a bit like the way an e in
>>>> vowel+consonant+e changes the preceding vowel - "magic letter".
>>
>>> You are claiming that a letter changes a sound. That's nonsense.
>>
>>> The r in your dialect marks the existence of a different vowel (it
>>> doesn't change it),
>>

>> That depends on how we understand "changes the vowel sound". To the
>> non-specialist, that is, almost all native speakers of English, "changes
>> the vowel sound" means "changes the way the written letter should be
>> pronounced".

>>
>>> but for most people in the world (not just the
>>> English-speaking world), it marks the presence of an r-sound.
>>

>> That deals with "ar". An alternative representation of the same vowel
>> sound that works better for rhotics is "ah". Does the "h" mark the
>> presence of an h-sound.

>
> Of course not, since /h/ does not occur postvocalically in English.

> Its allophone [N] ("ng") occurs in that position.
>

Ah, oh and eh are all English words, albeit lowly interjections. What we
do not find in normal English is vowel + h + any other letter.

--
Robert Bannister

[DKleinecke]

Vehicle and many others. I do not understand what you intended -
perhaps "any other consonant". But then I think the vowel is
unnecessary. 'h' is never followed by a consonant nor 'ng' by a vowel.
So if we write them both @ we know which one is intended. But, like
most other people, I wouldn't do that.

[Christian Weisgerber]

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

> My defense of the English language against upper-class corruptions.

> (Have you _heard_ the younger generation of the Royal Family replacing
> their final consonants with glottal stops?? On top of omitting their
> r's, soon they'll have no consonants left.)

A glottal stop _is_ a consonant. For genuine loss of a consonant,
there's h-dropping, but that is still heavily stigmatized in the
British upper class, I think.

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

"Only 12% of the convicts transported to Australia were Irish."
(And this is from a site celebrating the Irish in Australia:
http://www.nma.gov.au/exhibitions/irish_in_australia/family_history/irish_convicts
Another site puts it at 25%. Still a minority.

Wiki "Australian English" has an interesting reference to Peter Miller
Cunningham's 1827 book Two Years in New South Wales, "describing the
distinctive accent and vocabulary of the native born colonists,
different from that of their parents and with a strong London
influence". (Haven't been able to check the original, as the online
version of Cunningham won't work for me today.)
The references I gave to Walker and Keats (both London born) would
certainly indicate that Londoners were dropping their r's by this time.

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

On Sep 23, 10:15 am, na...@mips.inka.de (Christian Weisgerber) wrote:

don't forget "passel" and "hoss"

[Evan Kirshenbaum]

Who calls silent e a "helping vowel"? The only thing I see called a
"helping vowel" is the epenthetic addition of a vowel *sound* in a
consonant cluster that's perceived as difficult to pronounce.

> and (b) in the majority of dialects, it simply stands for itself,
> i.e. <r> = [r].

When I was in elementary school, the basic vowels we were taught
included "ow", "aw", and "oy". For non-rhotic speakers, is there
really any difference between such consonant letter use and "ar" or
"er"?

--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
Still with HP Labs |It's not coherent, it's merely
SF Bay Area (1982-) |focused.
Chicago (1964-1982) | Keith Moore

evan.kir...@gmail.com

http://www.kirshenbaum.net/

[Jerry Friedman]

On Sep 22, 6:24 pm, "benli...@ihug.co.nz" <benli...@ihug.co.nz> wrote:
> On Sep 23, 10:15 am, na...@mips.inka.de (Christian Weisgerber) wrote:
> > Brian M. Scott <b.sc...@csuohio.edu> wrote:
>
> > > sporadic /r/-loss is from c. 1300, though most of the
> > > evidence for the first round of /r/-loss is from the 15th
> > > and 16th centuries.  This first round occurred in stressed
> > > syllables before coronals, preferentially /s/, and did not
> > > cause lengthening.
>
> > So that's
> >   arse  > ass
> >   curse > cuss
> >   bars  > bass   (the fish, cf. German "Barsch")
>
> > Let's see... "ass" is AmE, "cuss" is AmE colloquial (dialectal,
> > euphemistic), and "bass" is the sole variant.  Messy.
>

> don't forget "passel" and "hoss"

And "bust" (and "sarsaparilla").

"Bass" the fish is first attested in the OED in 1440, "passel" from c.
1467, and "bust" from 1649. The others are later.

--
Jerry Friedman

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

On Sep 23, 12:46 pm, Evan Kirshenbaum <evan.kirshenb...@gmail.com>
wrote:

> "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> writes:

> > On Sep 22, 4:45 pm, Adam Funk <a24...@ducksburg.com> wrote:
> >> On 2012-09-22, Peter T. Daniels wrote:
>
> >> > On Sep 21, 8:34 pm, Robert Bannister <rob...@clubtelco.com> wrote:
> >> >> On 21/09/12 11:25 AM, Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> >> >> > On Sep 20, 8:35 pm, Robert Bannister <rob...@clubtelco.com> wrote:
> >> >> >> And for us non-rhotics, Bach is all too often "bark" which
> >> >> >> also has the wrong vowel.
>
> >> >> > If you're non-rhotic, how can you insert an r there?
>
> >> >> Because an r changes the vowel sound. That is precisely the function of
> >> >> r after a vowel for non-rhotics. It's a bit like the way an e in
> >> >> vowel+consonant+e changes the preceding vowel - "magic letter".
>
> >> > "Helping vowel."
>
> >> Hmm, so what's wrong with a "helping consonant" in some dialects?
>
> > (a) No one calls anything that
>
> Who calls silent e a "helping vowel"?  The only thing I see called a
> "helping vowel" is the epenthetic addition of a vowel *sound* in a
> consonant cluster that's perceived as difficult to pronounce.

Presumably a calque on Hilfsvokal? Of the google hits for "helping
vowel", not one of the first 100 or so has to do with English --
mostly Arabic, Hebrew, Celtic languages.

We just called it "silent e". So why not "silent r" for our arhotic
friends?

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

The "haitch" may have come (via Catholic schools) from Ireland, but
the epenthesis in "fillum" etc. is found all over the place.

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

On Sep 22, 11:55 pm, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
> On Sep 21, 8:50 pm, Robert Bannister <rob...@clubtelco.com> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> > On 22/09/12 6:42 AM, Evan Kirshenbaum wrote:
>
> > > Joachim Pense <s...@pense-mainz.eu> writes:
>
> > >> Am 21.09.2012 22:53, schrieb Peter T. Daniels:
>
> > >>> Perhaps you were not aware that the _omission_ of such r's is a recent
> > >>> -- mid-19th-century or so -- phenomenon, peculiar to a small district
> > >>> in southeastern England.
>
> > >>> It is r-lessness that is the affectation.
>
> > >> How did it spread to New York and the South?
>
> > > By boat.  The American dialects that are non-rhotic are those that had
> > > more contact (commercial and otherwise) with England, while the rhotic
> > > dialects were those further inland, who remained more conservative.
> > > The places with rhotic dialects also tended to have a greater number
> > > of immigrants from Scotland, Ireland and, I believe, the north of
> > > England.
>
> > I'm not convinced the immigrants affected it that all that much.
> > Australia has always had a very large percentage of people of Irish
> > ancestry, but once they lost their accent, they lost their Rs just like
> > everyone else. I suspect that just as dropping the R became fashionable
> > in England, stressing it became fashionable in America.
>
> They didn't "lose" their Irish accent. They took on an Australian
> accent.

Actually they did neither, if you're talking about individuals. Those
who emigrated (or were transported) as adults would have kept their
Irish accent to the end of their days. If you want to say that the
population, as a whole, in time took on an Australian accent, fine.
But then why not say that, in so doing, they "lost" their Irish (and
other non-Australian) accents?

[Brian M. Scott]

On Sat, 22 Sep 2012 15:40:35 -0400, Nathan Sanders
<san...@alum.mit.edu> wrote in
<news:sanders-A7B012...@free.teranews.com> in
alt.usage.english,sci.lang:

[...]

> However, in "vehicle" (where the relevant position is medial and
> before an unstressed vowel for many speakers), we would expect [N] to
> show up. But no native speaker ever has any urge whatsoever to
> pronounce this word as "ve[N]icle". Instead, the usual pronunciation
> is either "ve[]icle" or "ve[h]icle".

> And of course, we know that "vehicle" has the relevant phoneme, the
> one that is pronounced [h] before stressed vowels, because we get [h]
> in related words where the stress shifts, like "ve[h]icular".

> See also "annihiliate/nihility", "prehistoric/historic",
> "prohibition/prohibit", etc., which never get [N] in the first word,
> despite having [h] in the second.

I really like the idea of a hypercorrect perNaps < p'raps.
Such delightful novelty should be encouraged, not
proNibited!

Brian

[Nathan Sanders]

In article <1kuh3qbucw2ap$.ke5blr02...@40tude.net>,

"Brian M. Scott" <b.s...@csuohio.edu> wrote:

I find it difficult to even pronounce such monstrosities!

[Brian M. Scott]

On Sat, 22 Sep 2012 15:15:23 -0700 (PDT), "Peter T. Daniels"
<gram...@verizon.net> wrote in
<news:6d164c23-7e51-4a09...@r7g2000yqa.googlegroups.com>
in alt.usage.english,sci.lang:

> On Sep 22, 3:01 pm, Nathan Sanders <sand...@alum.mit.edu> wrote:

[context restored]

> > > Of course not, since /h/ does not occur postvocalically in English.
> >

> > But you have long claimed that "(tin) can" is /kehn/, and have even
> > explicitly called that /h/ "postvocalic":
> >
> > "in New York they are distinct and contrast at least in can /kæn/ 'be
> > able' vs. /kehn/ (those Smith-Tragerian postvocalic h's have at least
> > one legitimate use!) 'tin container'"
> >
> > <https://groups.google.com/group/sci.lang/msg/769530b8463aadf6>
> >
> > Are you no longer a fan of the Smith-Trager phonemecization?
>
> The biliteral syllabic nuclei are not compounds of the phonemes
> represented by the letters individually. They are just that --
> syllabic nuclei, some monophthongs, some diphthongs, that pattern
> alike.

[end restored context]

>> Nowhere in that paragraph do you directly address
>> either"postvocalic(ally)" or "h".

> For anyone but you, it wasn't necessary. They (the
> aue'ers) knew exactly what I was talking about.

If they're paying attention, they know that you are now
snipping to hide the fact that you *did* fail to address
Nathan's point.

Do you, or do you not stand by your earlier description /h/
in S-T /eh/ as postvocalic?

[Nathan Sanders]

In article
<a540400c-95c9-4fc0...@wm7g2000pbc.googlegroups.com>,

DKleinecke <dklei...@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Sep 22, 4:46 pm, Robert Bannister <rob...@clubtelco.com> wrote:
> > On 22/09/12 8:00 PM, Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> >
> > > Of course not, since /h/ does not occur postvocalically in English.
> > > Its allophone [N] ("ng") occurs in that position.
> >
> > Ah, oh and eh are all English words, albeit lowly interjections. What we
> > do not find in normal English is vowel + h + any other letter.
>

> Vehicle and many others. I do not understand what you intended -
> perhaps "any other consonant". But then I think the vowel is
> unnecessary. 'h' is never followed by a consonant nor 'ng' by a vowel.
> So if we write them both @ we know which one is intended. But, like
> most other people, I wouldn't do that.

None of these actually correctly describe English, whether you're
talking about spelling or (PTD's beloved) Trager-Smith phonemes:

spelling:
<chrome>, <dahlia>, <john>, <ohm>, etc.

T-S phonemes:
/kehn/ '(tin) can', /mehri/ 'Mary', etc.

If instead you're using a sensible phonemecization of English (for
example, with /E/ instead of /eh/), then yes, /h/ never occurs before
a consonant.

[Nathan Sanders]

[Recap of stuff that PTD "maliciously snipped": PTD said "/h/ does not
occur postvocalically in English". This was refuted, and PTD
responded without even mentioning "postvocalic" or "h".]

In article
<6d164c23-7e51-4a09...@r7g2000yqa.googlegroups.com>,

I can't see any way in which "vehicular" can possibly be construed as
not having a postvocalic /h/ (or even a postvocalic [h] or <h>). So
what did you really mean to say when you said "/h/ does not occur
postvocalically in English"? Or did you just completely forget about
words like "vehicular", which do in fact contain postvocalic /h/ (as
well as postvocalic [h] and postvocalic <h>)?

[Brian M. Scott]

On Sat, 22 Sep 2012 17:24:37 -0700 (PDT),
"benl...@ihug.co.nz" <benl...@ihug.co.nz> wrote in
<news:5c2d2cdf-a25e-4d26...@q9g2000pbo.googlegroups.com>
in alt.usage.english,sci.lang:

> On Sep 23, 10:15 am, na...@mips.inka.de (Christian
> Weisgerber) wrote:

>> Brian M. Scott <b.sc...@csuohio.edu> wrote:

>>> sporadic /r/-loss is from c. 1300, though most of the
>>> evidence for the first round of /r/-loss is from the 15th
>>> and 16th centuries.  This first round occurred in stressed
>>> syllables before coronals, preferentially /s/, and did not
>>> cause lengthening.

>> So that's
>>   arse  > ass
>>   curse > cuss
>>   bars  > bass   (the fish, cf. German "Barsch")

>> Let's see... "ass" is AmE, "cuss" is AmE colloquial
>> (dialectal, euphemistic), and "bass" is the sole
>> variant.  Messy.

> don't forget "passel" and "hoss"

And <bust>.

There's also the pronunciation of <Worcester>, for which we
have <Wosseter> 1552 and <Woster> 1701, and the hamlet of
Taston in Oxfordshire (<Thorstan> 1278).

Brian

[António Marques]

"Brian M. Scott" <b.s...@csuohio.edu> wrote:

Didn't he address the point by saying [something whose corollary is] that T-S's h in those syllabic nuclei isn't the /h/ phoneme? I could swear - but I won't, because I don't swear - that T-S even used small uppercase H for the syllabic nuclei. 
-- 
Sent from one of my newsreaders

[António Marques]

Nathan Sanders <san...@alum.mit.edu> wrote:
> [Recap of stuff that PTD "maliciously snipped": PTD said "/h/ does not 
> occur postvocalically in English".  This was refuted, and PTD 
> responded without even mentioning "postvocalic" or "h".]
> 
> In article 
> <6d164c23-7e51-4a09...@r7g2000yqa.googlegroups.com>,
>  "Peter T. Daniels" <gram...@verizon.net> wrote:
> 
>> On Sep 22, 3:01 pm, Nathan Sanders <sand...@alum.mit.edu> wrote:
>> 
>>> Nowhere in that paragraph do you directly address
>>> either"postvocalic(ally)" or "h".
>> 
>> For anyone but you, it wasn't necessary. They (the aue'ers) knew
>> exactly what I was talking about.
> 
> I can't see any way in which "vehicular" can possibly be construed as 
> not having a postvocalic /h/ (or even a postvocalic [h] or <h>).

When context clearly suggests 'within the same syllable'?

[Nathan Sanders]

In article <2fa46065-6f93-4a03...@googlegroups.com>,

For some definition of "clearly" that doesn't match mine.

Where was it ever "clearly" stated that the discussion was confined to
tautosyllabic phonotactics?

[Nathan Sanders]

In article <52156338-d367-4691...@googlegroups.com>,

It seems awfully silly for a system driven by an over-whelming desire
to reduce the number of phonemes to have both /h/ and /H/ hanging
around the system, without finding a way to collapse them into the
same phoneme.

Especially since they seem to be in complementary distribution, or
nearly so.

[António Marques]

It was the kind of word that was being discussed and it is what made sense for that specific reply. Just look at how many lines you had to write to describe the distribution of h/ng without recourse to 'syllable'. 

[Nathan Sanders]

In article <0e77cdc1-2ff5-4aa5...@googlegroups.com>,

The description wouldn't have been very much shorter, but would have
been a LOT less controversial (even native speakers don't always agree
on where syllable boundaries are; linguists certainly don't).

[António Marques]

Do I detect you doing that which Brian likes to refer to as 'goalposts some whatever'?

Do not count on me to explain T and S's motivations. The fact is that H was posited. Some choose to identify H with h, but not whoever I got my T-S from. And I find it possible that even those who don't want to identify them will have no problem using h for H when it isn't ambiguous, which it almost never is since one hardly ever needs to dwell on the possible distinction. 

[Nathan Sanders]

In article <d1dbbb73-c709-40b2...@googlegroups.com>,

So you didn't see PTD trying to argue for [N] being an allophone of
/h/?

The only reason to collapse [h] and [N] to one phoneme is to reduce
the phoneme inventory size. There's certainly no morphophonological
or phonetic justification for doing so.

(And as I pointed out, morphophonological justification for *not*
doing so.)

> Do not count on me to explain T and S's motivations. The fact is that H was
> posited. Some choose to identify H with h, but not whoever I got my T-S from.

So you're saying that PTD is consistently careless when he writes
/kehn/ instead of /keHn/?

[Nathan Sanders]

In article <sanders-DD24F7...@free.teranews.com>,

Besides, even if we restrict ourselves to tautosyllabic phonotactics
(the easiest way is to look only at monosyllables), PTD's statement is
*still* wrong, if we also accept his claim that [N] is an allophone of
/h/. Just consider "bang", which is phonetically [b&N], and by PTD's
analysis, it must be /b&h/ phonemically, clearly contradicting his
claim that "/h/ does not occur postvocalically in English".

And this is supposed to be the real /h/, the one whose other allophone
is [h]. This is not the fake Trager-Smith /H/ that you think PTD is
using every time he write /kehn/ as the phonemicization of "(tin) can".

*Somewhere* in the various things he has claimed about /h/, PTD has
gone wrong, and unfortunately, he will never tell us where, because
that would require admitting fault, and PTD don't play that.

[Brian M. Scott]

On Sat, 22 Sep 2012 05:37:23 -0700 (PDT), "Peter T. Daniels"
<gram...@verizon.net> wrote in
<news:7c044b1d-cdc7-4754...@o8g2000yqm.googlegroups.com>
in alt.usage.english,sci.lang:

> On Sep 22, 8:27 am, "Brian M. Scott" <b.sc...@csuohio.edu> wrote:

>> On Sat, 22 Sep 2012 04:58:27 -0700 (PDT), "Peter T. Daniels"
>> <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote in
>> <news:f5790991-907e-4ada...@a11g2000yqb.googlegroups.com>
>> in alt.usage.english,sci.lang:

>>> On Sep 21, 10:33 pm, "Brian M. Scott" <b.sc...@csuohio.edu> wrote:

>>>> On Fri, 21 Sep 2012 18:44:30 -0700 (PDT),
>>>> "benli...@ihug.co.nz" <benli...@ihug.co.nz> wrote in
>>>> <news:99137b69-ba6c-47b6...@t9g2000pbc.googlegroups.com>
>>>> in alt.usage.english,sci.lang:

>>>> [...]

>>>> Roger Lass has a good discussion of /r/-loss in _Historical
>>>> Linguistics and Language Change_.  The earliest evidence for

>>>> sporadic /r/-loss is from c. 1300, though most of the
>>>> evidence for the first round of /r/-loss is from the 15th
>>>> and 16th centuries.  This first round occurred in stressed
>>>> syllables before coronals, preferentially /s/, and did not
>>>> cause lengthening.

>>>> The earliest evidence for /r/-loss in weak syllables is from
>>>> the late 17th century.  The first good evidence for pre-/r/
>>>> lengthening comes from the late 17th century.  By the middle
>>>> of the 18th century there are clear descriptions of pre-/r/
>>>> lengthening and noticeable weakening of /r/ 'dans plusieurs
>>>> mots', and by the end of the century there is clear evidence
>>>> that the phenomenon was general enough to be stigmatized by
>>>> some.  By c. 1874 (Sweet) it was very well established in
>>>> what are now the non-rhotic dialects, but not quite
>>>> universal.

>>> Thus, as I said in the first place, mid-19th century.
>>> Obviously it had to start earlier in order to have spread
>>> and become prestigious!

>> You are misrepresenting your earlier statement.  You wrote:

>>>   Perhaps you were not aware that the _omission_ of such
>>>   r's is a recent -- mid-19th-century or so -- phenomenon,

>> This statement is demonstrably false.

> You don't need to flaunt your membership in the
> nitpickers' club. My statement was exactly appropriate
> for its context.

No, it wasn't. It was actively misleading.

> Maybe now that you're retired from professoring, you can
> donate some time to tutoring children who are behind in
> arithmetic, algebra, or geometry.

As it happens, by choice I'm spending many hours a week --
certainly more than 40 -- tutoring mathematics on-line. I'm
good at it, and I enjoy it. And it's certainly far more
rewarding than dealing with your pigheaded refusal to
recognize your errors and insistence on issuing
pronouncements on subjects about which you know little or
nothing, never mind your pettiness and parochial outlook,
for which your increasingly rare useful contributions are
are inadequate compensation.

> Would you try to introduce them to Foundations of
> Mathematics when what they need to do is memorize the
> quadratic formula, or give a proof of the Pythagorean
> Theorem?

Not even remotely comparable.

>> There was widespread
>> omission a century earlier, and you said nothing about
>> prestige.

>>>   peculiar to a small district in southeastern England.

>> This statement is ridiculously false.

No response, I see.

>>>   It is r-lessness that is the affectation.

>> Only for those who don't have it natively; millions do
>> have it natively.  Your Anglophobia is on display
>> again.-

> My defense of the English language against upper-class
> corruptions.

You have the direction of influence exactly backwards. You
probably aren't familiar enough with British varieties to
know that, but even a very rudimentary knowledge of
sociolinguistics should have led you to suspect it.
(Besides, you've displayed a more general prejudice many
times over the years.)

[Evan Kirshenbaum]

DKleinecke <dklei...@gmail.com> writes:

> Vehicle and many others. I do not understand what you intended -
> perhaps "any other consonant". But then I think the vowel is
> unnecessary. 'h' is never followed by a consonant nor 'ng' by a vowel.

Huh? "Singer", "hanging", etc.

> So if we write them both @ we know which one is intended. But, like
> most other people, I wouldn't do that.

--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
Still with HP Labs |A burro is an ass. A burrow is a
SF Bay Area (1982-) |hole in the ground. As a
Chicago (1964-1982) |journalist, you are expected to
|know the difference.
evan.kir...@gmail.com | UPI Stylebook

http://www.kirshenbaum.net/

[Brian M. Scott]

On Sun, 23 Sep 2012 00:21:12 -0400, Nathan Sanders
<san...@alum.mit.edu> wrote in
<news:sanders-43B189...@free.teranews.com> in
sci.lang:

> In article <d1dbbb73-c709-40b2...@googlegroups.com>,
> António Marques <ent...@gmail.com> wrote:

[...]

>> Do not count on me to explain T and S's motivations. The
>> fact is that H was posited. Some choose to identify H
>> with h, but not whoever I got my T-S from.

> So you're saying that PTD is consistently careless when he
> writes /kehn/ instead of /keHn/?

I don't care enough to check, but I'm not at all sure that
T-S made the distinction between /h/ and /H/; I know that
Bloch & Trager didn't. Gleason makes it, but on a quick
check I didn't spot any clear statement that he took it over
from T-S.

Brian

[Jerry Friedman]

On Sep 22, 10:59 pm, Evan Kirshenbaum <evan.kirshenb...@gmail.com>
wrote:

> DKleinecke <dkleine...@gmail.com> writes:
> > Vehicle and many others.  I do not understand what you intended -
> > perhaps "any other consonant". But then I think the vowel is
> > unnecessary. 'h' is never followed by a consonant nor 'ng' by a vowel.
>
> Huh?  "Singer", "hanging", etc.

Is it possible that /N/ occurs only after (historically) short vowels,
and post-vocalic /h/ only after (historically) long ones? I think
that's true in my dialect, though some may have /I/ before /h/ in
"rehash", "dehiscent"--a word I for one pronounce every day :-) --,
and others.

--
Jerry Friedman

[Jerry Friedman]

Ahem. I think I found an exception. Aha!

--
Jerry Friedman

[Nathan Sanders]

In article
<6288d06c-9940-4960...@e14g2000yqm.googlegroups.com>,

Jerry Friedman <jerry_f...@yahoo.com> wrote:

> On Sep 22, 10:59 pm, Evan Kirshenbaum <evan.kirshenb...@gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > DKleinecke <dkleine...@gmail.com> writes:
> > > Vehicle and many others.  I do not understand what you intended -
> > > perhaps "any other consonant". But then I think the vowel is
> > > unnecessary. 'h' is never followed by a consonant nor 'ng' by a vowel.
> >
> > Huh?  "Singer", "hanging", etc.
>
> Is it possible that /N/ occurs only after (historically) short vowels,

"boing"?

> and post-vocalic /h/ only after (historically) long ones?

"ahead", "cahoots", "formaldehyde", "Idaho", "octahedron", "Sahara",
"Tahiti", "ultrahuman"?

It depends on what you're counting as "historically long/short" (and
in which language!).

[Peter Brooks]

On Sep 22, 7:40 pm, "Peter Duncanson [BrE]" <m...@peterduncanson.net>
wrote:

> On Sat, 22 Sep 2012 05:37:23 -0700 (PDT), "Peter T. Daniels"
>

> <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
> >My defense of the English language against upper-class corruptions.

> >(Have you _heard_ the younger generation of the Royal Family replacing
> >their final consonants with glottal stops?? On top of omitting their
> >r's, soon they'll have no consonants left.)
>
> They are just fitting in with the lower classes.
>
According to Helen Mirren, Brenda has adopted Estuary. She probably
caught it from Phony Tony.

[pauljk]

"Brian M. Scott" <b.s...@csuohio.edu> wrote in message
news:mq1cwu6dl8b4$.1q3h78g3focum$.dlg@40tude.net...
> On Sat, 22 Sep 2012 04:58:27 -0700 (PDT), "Peter T. Daniels"
> <gram...@verizon.net> wrote in

> This statement is demonstrably false. There was widespread

> omission a century earlier, and you said nothing about
> prestige.
>
>> peculiar to a small district in southeastern England.
>
> This statement is ridiculously false.
>

>> It is r-lessness that is the affectation.
>
> Only for those who don't have it natively; millions do have
> it natively. Your Anglophobia is on display again.

Anglophobia AND Australasiophobia. :-(

pjk

[pauljk]

"Peter T. Daniels" <gram...@verizon.net> wrote in message
news:7c044b1d-cdc7-4754...@o8g2000yqm.googlegroups.com...

> On Sep 22, 8:27 am, "Brian M. Scott" <b.sc...@csuohio.edu> wrote:
>> On Sat, 22 Sep 2012 04:58:27 -0700 (PDT), "Peter T. Daniels"

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

> You don't need to flaunt your membership in the nitpickers' club. My
> statement was exactly appropriate for its context.
>

> Maybe now that you're retired from professoring, you can donate some
> time to tutoring children who are behind in arithmetic, algebra, or

> geometry. Would you try to introduce them to Foundations of

> Mathematics when what they need to do is memorize the quadratic
> formula, or give a proof of the Pythagorean Theorem?
>

>> There was widespread
>> omission a century earlier, and you said nothing about
>> prestige.
>>
>> > peculiar to a small district in southeastern England.
>>
>> This statement is ridiculously false.
>>
>> > It is r-lessness that is the affectation.
>>
>> Only for those who don't have it natively; millions do have

>> it natively. Your Anglophobia is on display again.-

>
> My defense of the English language against upper-class corruptions.
> (Have you _heard_ the younger generation of the Royal Family replacing
> their final consonants with glottal stops?? On top of omitting their
> r's, soon they'll have no consonants left.)

This is ridiculous and silly, accusing millions of people all around
the world, who speak natively non-rhotic English, of upper-class
corruption just because you couldn't help yourself listening
to some young royal twats on your telly which left you with
an adverse impression.

pjk

[Dr Nick]

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

> On Sep 21, 2:43 pm, Peter Brooks <peter.h.m.bro...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Sep 21, 4:37 pm, "Peter Duncanson [BrE]"
>> <m...@peterduncanson.net> wrote:> On Fri, 21 Sep 2012 04:23:39 -0700
>> (PDT), "Peter T. Daniels"
>> > In effect, to a non-rhotic speaker "ar" is a vowel.
>> I think that's an excellent way of putting it. I hadn't thought of
>> it that way, but it makes sense. It explains why it's so
>> particularly jarring when somebody goes and put a heavy 'r' sound in
>> the middle of a word like 'bark'. It has, at times, made me think
>> that it's an affectation - as if somebody read English and put heavy
>> underlining under each 'r' to be sure to make every one sound. This
>> isn't true of all words, just the ones that, as you say, have, in
>> effect, an 'r'less vowel in them.

>
> Perhaps you were not aware that the _omission_ of such r's is a recent

> -- mid-19th-century or so -- phenomenon, peculiar to a small district
> in southeastern England.
>

> It is r-lessness that is the affectation.

It's not an affectation if it's part of the native dialect, surely? By
definition, an affectation is you doing something unnatural because you
think it's higher status.

It may have started as such - as, so I've heard, the long southern "a"
in "bath" did - but once the next generation grow up learning it it's
not "affected" in any way.

[Joachim Pense]

Am 23.09.2012 08:27, schrieb pauljk:
>
> This is ridiculous and silly, accusing millions of people all around
> the world, who speak natively non-rhotic English, of upper-class
> corruption just because you couldn't help yourself listening
> to some young royal twats on your telly which left you with
> an adverse impression.
>

Is "telly" a familiar word in AE?

Joachim

[Peter T. Daniels]

On Sep 22, 9:43 pm, "benli...@ihug.co.nz" <benli...@ihug.co.nz> wrote:
> On Sep 22, 11:55 pm, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
> > On Sep 21, 8:50 pm, Robert Bannister <rob...@clubtelco.com> wrote:
>
> > > On 22/09/12 6:42 AM, Evan Kirshenbaum wrote:
>
> > > > Joachim Pense <s...@pense-mainz.eu> writes:

>
> > > >> Am 21.09.2012 22:53, schrieb Peter T. Daniels:
>
> > > >>> Perhaps you were not aware that the _omission_ of such r's is a recent
> > > >>> -- mid-19th-century or so -- phenomenon, peculiar to a small district
> > > >>> in southeastern England.
>
> > > >>> It is r-lessness that is the affectation.
>

> > > >> How did it spread to New York and the South?
>
> > > > By boat.  The American dialects that are non-rhotic are those that had
> > > > more contact (commercial and otherwise) with England, while the rhotic
> > > > dialects were those further inland, who remained more conservative.
> > > > The places with rhotic dialects also tended to have a greater number
> > > > of immigrants from Scotland, Ireland and, I believe, the north of
> > > > England.
>
> > > I'm not convinced the immigrants affected it that all that much.
> > > Australia has always had a very large percentage of people of Irish
> > > ancestry, but once they lost their accent, they lost their Rs just like
> > > everyone else. I suspect that just as dropping the R became fashionable
> > > in England, stressing it became fashionable in America.
>
> > They didn't "lose" their Irish accent. They took on an Australian
> > accent.
>
> Actually they did neither, if you're talking about individuals. Those
> who emigrated (or were transported) as adults would have kept their
> Irish accent to the end of their days. If you want to say that the
> population, as a whole, in time took on an Australian accent, fine.
> But then why not say that, in so doing, they "lost" their Irish (and
> other non-Australian) accents?-

Anyone living in a noticeably different dialect area assimilates
features of it in just a few months. When a Research Associate at the
Oriental Instiitute went home to London for Christmas vacation after
about three months in Chicago, his friends teased him about having an
American accent, and when he returned a few weeks later, his British
accent was stronger than ever.

Individuals who immigrated from Ireland did not lose their Irish
accents, they picked up an Australian accent.

[Peter T. Daniels]

On Sep 22, 7:34 pm, Robert Bannister <rob...@clubtelco.com> wrote:
> On 22/09/12 8:02 PM, Peter T. Daniels wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
> > On Sep 21, 8:52 pm, Robert Bannister <rob...@clubtelco.com> wrote:
> >> On 22/09/12 4:51 AM, Peter T. Daniels wrote:
>
> >>> On Sep 21, 10:37 am, "Peter Duncanson [BrE]" <m...@peterduncanson.net>
> >>> wrote:
> >>>> On Fri, 21 Sep 2012 04:23:39 -0700 (PDT), "Peter T. Daniels"
>
> >>>> <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
> >>>>> On Sep 21, 12:45 am, Joachim Pense <s...@pense-mainz.eu> wrote:
> >>>>>> Am 21.09.2012 05:25, schrieb Peter T. Daniels:
>
> >>>>>>> On Sep 20, 8:35 pm, Robert Bannister <rob...@clubtelco.com> wrote:
> >>>>>>>> And for us non-rhotics, Bach is all too often "bark" which also has the
> >>>>>>>> wrong vowel.
>
> >>>>>>> If you're non-rhotic, how can you insert an r there?
>
> >>>>>> To lengthen the vowel?
>
> >>>>> How does [r] make a vowel longer?
>
> >>>>> Longer than what?
>
> >>>> Longer than a shorter vowel.
>
> >>>> To a non-rhotic BrE-speaker "ar" represents the sound he/she uses when
> >>>> saying the "ar" in words such as park, bark and lark: /A/. That is a
> >>>> longer vowel than in pack, back and lack: /a/. A non-rhotic speaker is
>
> >>> The difference in quality is far more salient than the difference in
> >>> quantity.
>
> >>>> quite likely to use "ar" to represent /A/ without thinking that this
> >>>> might be confusing to those people who sound their "r"s.

>
> >>>> In effect, to a non-rhotic speaker "ar" is a vowel.
>

> >>> But Robert has _been_ through the entire discussion, and so can no
> >>> longer be among those who are not aware of the confusion, but
> >>> apparently learned nothing from it.
>
> >> I knew you would rise to the bait, but at the same time, we have no word
> >> "bahk" in English, and of course I knew you would know exactly what I
> >> meant even though you would protest and have done so.
>
> > Of course _I_ knew what you meant, but millions of people (such as the
> > writers at TV Guide) would _not_ know what you meant, so that "Sade"
> > was pronounced with an [r] on hundreds of radio stations for who-knows-
> > how-long.
>
> Which is why writers of popular magazines or similar should write for
> their audience and should not be using or copying someone else's
> mannerisms. I don't suppose the writers of TV guides anywhere are
> renowned for their English-writing ability, but you would think they
> would be able to spell out a sound that their own readership would
> understand. I am guessing they copied the version with R from a British
> publication.

For the umpteenth time, how would they have had the opportunity to
have HEARD the name pronounced? All they got in the press kit was the
"shar-DAY" and presumably a 45 of her hit song -- which would not have
her name stated during it!

[Peter T. Daniels]

In a crossword puzzle I did yeterday, the clue was "network on the
telly." The obvious answer was "BBC," because "telly" has no US
meaning.

[Peter T. Daniels]

On Sep 23, 2:27 am, "pauljk" <paul.kr...@xtra.co.nz> wrote:
> "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote in messagenews:7c044b1d-cdc7-4754...@o8g2000yqm.googlegroups.com...

Their language is non-rhotic because it was imposed on them (i.e., by
requiring their schooling to be in the metropolitan language; see
Macaulay) by their colonial masters, who represented precisely that
class.

[Peter T. Daniels]

On Sep 22, 11:33 pm, António Marques <ento...@gmail.com> wrote:

> "Brian M. Scott" <b.sc...@csuohio.edu> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
> > On Sat, 22 Sep 2012 15:15:23 -0700 (PDT), "Peter T. Daniels"

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

Gleason does, because he was typeset; T-S don't, because they were
typed. (And that typographically simpler usage eventually prevailed in
print; compare the IPA's recommendation to use the typographically
simplest symbol when no contrast is involved.)

[Peter T. Daniels]

On Sep 23, 12:21 am, Nathan Sanders <sand...@alum.mit.edu> wrote:
> In article <d1dbbb73-c709-40b2...@googlegroups.com>,

>  António Marques <ento...@gmail.com> wrote:

>
>
>
>
>
> > Nathan Sanders <sand...@alum.mit.edu> wrote:
> > > In article <52156338-d367-4691...@googlegroups.com>,

> > >  António Marques <ento...@gmail.com> wrote:

> > >
> > >> "Brian M. Scott" <b.sc...@csuohio.edu> wrote:
> > >>> On Sat, 22 Sep 2012 15:15:23 -0700 (PDT), "Peter T. Daniels"

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

You really ought to familiarize yourself with the literature before
making such absurd pronunciamentos. There most certainly were
demonstrations of phonetic similarity betwen [h] and [N].

> (And as I pointed out, morphophonological justification for *not*
> doing so.)
>
> > Do not count on me to explain T and S's motivations. The fact is that H was
> > posited. Some choose to identify H with h, but not whoever I got my T-S from.
>
> So you're saying that PTD is consistently careless when he writes
> /kehn/ instead of /keHn/?

You really ought to familiarize yourself with the literature before
making such absurd pronunciamentos. See previous posting about who
used <H> and when, and why <h> eventually prevailed.

[Peter T. Daniels]

On Sep 22, 10:54 pm, Nathan Sanders <sand...@alum.mit.edu> wrote:
> [Recap of stuff that PTD "maliciously snipped": PTD said "/h/ does not

> occur postvocalically in English".  This was refuted, and PTD
> responded without even mentioning "postvocalic" or "h".]
>
> In article

> <6d164c23-7e51-4a09-b296-4f69ed85d...@r7g2000yqa.googlegroups.com>,

>  "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
>
> > On Sep 22, 3:01 pm, Nathan Sanders <sand...@alum.mit.edu> wrote:
>
> > > Nowhere in that paragraph do you directly address
> > > either"postvocalic(ally)" or "h".
>
> > For anyone but you, it wasn't necessary. They (the aue'ers) knew
> > exactly what I was talking about.
>

> I can't see any way in which "vehicular" can possibly be construed as
> not having a postvocalic /h/ (or even a postvocalic [h] or <h>).

You really ought to consult the facts before making such absurd
pronunciamentos. Or do you practice some sort of phonetics where
syllable boundary is not taken into account when referring to
something as "postvocalic"?

> So
> what did you really mean to say when you said "/h/ does not occur
> postvocalically in English"?  Or did you just completely forget about
> words like "vehicular", which do in fact contain postvocalic /h/ (as
> well as postvocalic [h] and postvocalic <h>)?

Only to those who don't understand the term "postvocalic."

[Peter T. Daniels]

On Sep 23, 12:01 am, António Marques <ento...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Nathan Sanders <sand...@alum.mit.edu> wrote:
> > In article <2fa46065-6f93-4a03...@googlegroups.com>,

> >  António Marques <ento...@gmail.com> wrote:

> >
> >> Nathan Sanders <sand...@alum.mit.edu> wrote:
> >>> [Recap of stuff that PTD "maliciously snipped": PTD said "/h/ does not
> >>> occur postvocalically in English".  This was refuted, and PTD
> >>> responded without even mentioning "postvocalic" or "h".]
> >>>
> >>> In article

> >>> <6d164c23-7e51-4a09-b296-4f69ed85d...@r7g2000yqa.googlegroups.com>,

> >>>  "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
> >>>
> >>>> On Sep 22, 3:01 pm, Nathan Sanders <sand...@alum.mit.edu> wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>>> Nowhere in that paragraph do you directly address
> >>>>> either"postvocalic(ally)" or "h".
> >>>>
> >>>> For anyone but you, it wasn't necessary. They (the aue'ers) knew
> >>>> exactly what I was talking about.
> >>>
> >>> I can't see any way in which "vehicular" can possibly be construed as
> >>> not having a postvocalic /h/ (or even a postvocalic [h] or <h>).
> >>
> >> When context clearly suggests 'within the same syllable'?
> >
> > For some definition of "clearly" that doesn't match mine.
> >
> > Where was it ever "clearly" stated that the discussion was confined to
> > tautosyllabic phonotactics?
>
> It was the kind of word that was being discussed and it is what made sense for that specific reply. Just look at how many lines you had to write to describe the distribution of h/ng without recourse to 'syllable'.

Never mind. Leave Nathan to pick the nits out of his own asshole,
which got there from where his head is up.

[Peter T. Daniels]

On Sep 22, 8:46 pm, Evan Kirshenbaum <evan.kirshenb...@gmail.com>
wrote:
> "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> writes:
>
>
>
>
>
> > On Sep 22, 4:45 pm, Adam Funk <a24...@ducksburg.com> wrote:
> >> On 2012-09-22, Peter T. Daniels wrote:
>
> >> > On Sep 21, 8:34 pm, Robert Bannister <rob...@clubtelco.com> wrote:

> >> >> On 21/09/12 11:25 AM, Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> >> >> > On Sep 20, 8:35 pm, Robert Bannister <rob...@clubtelco.com> wrote:
> >> >> >> And for us non-rhotics, Bach is all too often "bark" which
> >> >> >> also has the wrong vowel.
>
> >> >> > If you're non-rhotic, how can you insert an r there?
>

> >> >> Because an r changes the vowel sound. That is precisely the function of
> >> >> r after a vowel for non-rhotics. It's a bit like the way an e in
> >> >> vowel+consonant+e changes the preceding vowel - "magic letter".
>
> >> > "Helping vowel."
>
> >> Hmm, so what's wrong with a "helping consonant" in some dialects?
>
> > (a) No one calls anything that
>
> Who calls silent e a "helping vowel"?

The teachers who were teaching the other children to read in my first
grade class in 1957.

> The only thing I see called a
> "helping vowel" is the epenthetic addition of a vowel *sound* in a
> consonant cluster that's perceived as difficult to pronounce.
>
> > and (b) in the majority of dialects, it simply stands for itself,
> > i.e. <r> = [r].
>
> When I was in elementary school, the basic vowels we were taught
> included "ow", "aw", and "oy".  For non-rhotic speakers, is there
> really any difference between such consonant letter use and "ar" or
> "er"?

Paring, veering, where the r's have their own sounds. Since bowing and
cloying have the w and y sounds, and so do bow and cloy, why shouldn't
pare and veer have the r sounds -- if those are to be considered
parallels?

[Peter T. Daniels]

On Sep 22, 9:34 pm, "benli...@ihug.co.nz" <benli...@ihug.co.nz> wrote:
> On Sep 23, 12:46 pm, Evan Kirshenbaum <evan.kirshenb...@gmail.com>

> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
> > "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> writes:
> > > On Sep 22, 4:45 pm, Adam Funk <a24...@ducksburg.com> wrote:
> > >> On 2012-09-22, Peter T. Daniels wrote:
>
> > >> > On Sep 21, 8:34 pm, Robert Bannister <rob...@clubtelco.com> wrote:
> > >> >> On 21/09/12 11:25 AM, Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> > >> >> > On Sep 20, 8:35 pm, Robert Bannister <rob...@clubtelco.com> wrote:
> > >> >> >> And for us non-rhotics, Bach is all too often "bark" which
> > >> >> >> also has the wrong vowel.
>
> > >> >> > If you're non-rhotic, how can you insert an r there?
>
> > >> >> Because an r changes the vowel sound. That is precisely the function of
> > >> >> r after a vowel for non-rhotics. It's a bit like the way an e in
> > >> >> vowel+consonant+e changes the preceding vowel - "magic letter".
>
> > >> > "Helping vowel."
>
> > >> Hmm, so what's wrong with a "helping consonant" in some dialects?
>
> > > (a) No one calls anything that
>

> > Who calls silent e a "helping vowel"?  The only thing I see called a

> > "helping vowel" is the epenthetic addition of a vowel *sound* in a
> > consonant cluster that's perceived as difficult to pronounce.
>

> Presumably a calque on Hilfsvokal? Of the google hits for "helping
> vowel", not one of the first 100 or so has to do with English --
> mostly Arabic, Hebrew, Celtic languages.
>
> We just called it "silent e". So why not "silent r" for our arhotic
> friends?-

When's the last time you looked through the literature for training
reading-teachers?

[Peter T. Daniels]

On Sep 22, 7:35 pm, Robert Bannister <rob...@clubtelco.com> wrote:
> On 22/09/12 5:25 PM, Joachim Pense wrote:
> > Am 22.09.2012 01:05, schrieb Christian Weisgerber:
> >> Joachim Pense  <s...@pense-mainz.eu> wrote:
>
> >>>> But to most of the world of English-speakers, it signifies something
> >>>> quite else.
>
> >>> Can one really say "quite else"?
>
> >> Yes.
>
> > And "Something quite else" means the same as "something quite different"?
>
> It does,

It doesn't. I already mentioned that "something else" is not the same
as "something different." The former, perhaps, refers to another
entity, the latter to other properties.

> but the use of "else" or "other" in this way is somewhat
> unusual. Some might find it old-fashioned.

[Peter T. Daniels]

On Sep 23, 4:45 am, Dr Nick <nospa...@temporary-address.org.uk> wrote:

> not "affected" in any way.-

RP, it is said, is the native dialect of very, very few people.

[Peter Duncanson [BrE]]

Even if they had heard the name spoken *by a BrE speaker* it would have
needed only one person familiar with BrE pronunciation to say "the Brits
don't sound their 'r's", for Americans to assume that the 'r' in
"shar-DAY" sould be sounded in by AmE-speakers.

--
Peter Duncanson, UK
(in alt.usage.english)

[Joachim Pense]

I guess that "network" in that sense is not a UK meaning.

Joachim

[Joachim Pense]

Am 23.09.2012 15:19, schrieb Peter T. Daniels:
> On Sep 22, 7:35 pm, Robert Bannister <rob...@clubtelco.com> wrote:
>> On 22/09/12 5:25 PM, Joachim Pense wrote:
>>> Am 22.09.2012 01:05, schrieb Christian Weisgerber:
>>>> Joachim Pense <s...@pense-mainz.eu> wrote:
>>
>>>>>> But to most of the world of English-speakers, it signifies something
>>>>>> quite else.
>>
>>>>> Can one really say "quite else"?
>>
>>>> Yes.
>>
>>> And "Something quite else" means the same as "something quite different"?
>>
>> It does,
>
> It doesn't. I already mentioned that "something else" is not the same
> as "something different." The former, perhaps, refers to another
> entity, the latter to other properties.
>

Good point: if you express another entity, not another quality, how does
it make sense to quantify that other-ness with "quite"?

I think this is the reason why I stumbled over the "quite else" and
wanted to replace it by "quite different".

Joachim