pawn/porn
Donna Richoux
say "the porn business" when actually what she said was "the pawn
business." I'd like to know if those two words really sound the same to
RP speakers, or was this (quite likely) just my unfamiliarity with
British vowels? Plus the fact that I was headed toward the kitchen when
she said it, so maybe didn't hear it clearly.
--
Curious --- Donna Richoux
Charles Dillingham
(some of) the people in the NYC area (especially New Jersey)
articulate a nonexistant "r" in many words ... e.g., "I sorr her
walking down the sidewalk."
"Donna Richoux" <tr...@euronet.nl> wrote in message
news:1f22hrp.2lbhlj1qifbq1N%tr...@euronet.nl...
Pat Durkin
"Charles Dillingham" <c...@jxn.net> wrote in message
news:9rl4me$1teq$1...@news.futuresouth.com...
> Based upon what I have heard, both (some of) the British and
> (some of) the people in the NYC area (especially New Jersey)
> articulate a nonexistant "r" in many words ... e.g., "I sorr her
> walking down the sidewalk."
>
My brother-in-law, born and raised in Hicksville, L.I., served in the army
in Korear. After 40 years in Wisconsin, he still pronounces hen fruit as
"rawreggs".
I expect I would have some elements of my midwestern speech persist after 40
years in another region. I wonder what they would be?
Pat
Don Aitken
wrote:
I would say them exactly the same. To be more precise, I wouldn't say
"the pawn business" at all, because it would be obvious that it would
be heard as "the porn business", and I can see no way to avoid that.
--
Don Aitken
Fred Galvin
That explains _Soft Pawn_ as the title of a book of chess humor by
British master William Hartston.
Linz
Yes, in most non-rhotic dialects of UK English pawn and porn have the
same vowel. I'd write it in ASCII IPA but I can't find my printout...
--
I'm not denying we're cheesy but we're good at it.
Fay (Steps)
Ben Zimmer
It's [pO:n], I presume ([O] would be the "turned c" in regular IPA,
representing an open-mid back rounded vowel).
--Ben
Jonathan Jordan
dictionaries to give /pO:n/ for both. For me the vowels are the same, but
there's something between it and the /n/ in "porn".
Jonathan
Harvey V
<jonatha...@st-annes.ox.ac.uk> wrote:
> Donna Richoux <tr...@euronet.nl> wrote in message
> news:1f22hrp.2lbhlj1qifbq1N%tr...@euronet.nl...
-snip re: RP pronunciation of pawn/porn-
>>
> The RP pronunciations sound the same to me, and I would expect most
> British dictionaries to give /pO:n/ for both. For me the vowels
> are the same, but there's something between it and the /n/ in
> "porn".
Some of us call that an "r"...
Harvey
K. Edgcombe
Donna Richoux <tr...@euronet.nl> wrote:
>Listening to BBC 2 tonight, I thought I heard someone (an RP speaker)
>say "the porn business" when actually what she said was "the pawn
>business." I'd like to know if those two words really sound the same to
>RP speakers, or was this (quite likely) just my unfamiliarity with
>British vowels? Plus the fact that I was headed toward the kitchen when
Virtually indistinguishable in my speech. That is, if I wanted to talk about
the pawn business I might artificially push the vowel a bit further away from
"porn", to avoid misunderstandings. This suggests that I do know what the
difference would be, if there were one; I am capable of making a distinction,
but you'd have to have a pretty acute ear to hear it in my normal speech.
Katy
Jonathan Jordan
K. Edgcombe <ke...@cus.cam.ac.uk> wrote in message
news:9rlr78$ks1$1...@pegasus.csx.cam.ac.uk...
same with "port" or would something different happen there?
Jonathan
Jonathan Jordan
Harvey V <whhvs@*removethis*operamail.com> wrote in message
news:Xns914A5CC9...@62.253.162.104...
Jonathan
Matthew M. Huntbach
I'd say they have slightly different vowels, though close enough
that they could be confused. I think most British English speakers
though non-rhotic would distinguish between "pore" and "paw". It is
possibly a distinction that is disappearing so to younger people there
would be no difference.
Matthew Huntbach
dcw
Matthew M. Huntbach <m...@dcs.qmw.ac.uk> wrote:
>I'd say they have slightly different vowels, though close enough
>that they could be confused. I think most British English speakers
>though non-rhotic would distinguish between "pore" and "paw". It is
>possibly a distinction that is disappearing so to younger people there
>would be no difference.
This distinction ([pO@] vs [pO:]) disappeared from RP even before my time.
Younger speakers are now merging "poor", which to me is [pU@], as well.
David
Mike Barnes
>Listening to BBC 2 tonight, I thought I heard someone (an RP speaker)
>say "the porn business" when actually what she said was "the pawn
>business." I'd like to know if those two words really sound the same to
>RP speakers
To me they do. Exactly the same.
A load of balls whichever way you look at it.
--
Mike Barnes
Jonathan Jordan
Matthew M. Huntbach <m...@dcs.qmw.ac.uk> wrote in message
news:9rltsg$pjj$8...@beta.qmw.ac.uk...
<snip>
> I'd say they have slightly different vowels, though close enough
> that they could be confused. I think most British English speakers
> though non-rhotic would distinguish between "pore" and "paw". It is
> possibly a distinction that is disappearing so to younger people there
> would be no difference.
>
There are two different possible distinctions here, so it's easy to get
confused. In this area, I have an unusually (?) conservative accent, which
has a three-way distinction between "awe" /O:/, stressed "or" /O:r/ and
"oar" /oUr/ (which is not a particularly appropriate symbol for the actual
sound). Now "pawn" follows "awe", "porn" follows "or" and "pore" follows
"oar", as do "pork" and "port".
I've just looked at the OED's pronunciation schemes. The Second Edition,
which uses a version of the original First Edition system transcribed into
IPA (which can be dated to about 1880), allows for the "oar" group to be
distinguished from the other two, but seems to consistently give /O:/ for
the first two, including "pawn" and "porn". The Third Edition uses a new
system, which appears not to allow for any of these distinctions, giving the
same vowel for "force", "north" and "thought". However, it pleases me by
giving equal weight to the northern and southern pronunciations of "bath".
Jonathan
K. Edgcombe
Jonathan Jordan <jonatha...@st-annes.ox.ac.uk> wrote:
>
>K. Edgcombe <ke...@cus.cam.ac.uk> wrote in message
>news:9rlr78$ks1$1...@pegasus.csx.cam.ac.uk...
>>
>about
>> the pawn business I might artificially push the vowel a bit further away
>from
>> "porn", to avoid misunderstandings. This suggests that I do know what the
>> difference would be, if there were one; I am capable of making a
>distinction,
>> but you'd have to have a pretty acute ear to hear it in my normal speech.
>>
>How would the distinction work if you did make it? And would you do the
>same with "port" or would something different happen there?
>
I am not expert enough in all this to describe very clearly what I do, but if I
want to make the distinction I would describe the "pawn" vowel as being
further forward.
"Porn" and "port" seem to me to have exactly the same vowel in my speech
(subject to the slight difference at the end because the terminating consonant
is so different).
While we're at it, I make roughly the same distinction between "paw" and "pore"
as between "pawn" and "porn", but (experimenting a bit) the distinction is
easier to hear. "Poor" is quite different again.
I suspect that in a formal context, and certainly when singing, the difference
would become much clearer than it is in my casual speech. But then, I can't
remember that I have ever had occasion to sing about either "pawn" or "porn".
For reference, my speech is approx. modern RP, London upbringing 1960s, with a
touch of Yorkshire and a touch (or more than a touch by a1a standards) of
Cockney.
Katy
Harvey V
<jonatha...@st-annes.ox.ac.uk> wrote:
>>
>> -snip re: RP pronunciation of pawn/porn-
>>>>
>>> there's something between it and the /n/ in "porn".
>>
>> Some of us call that an "r"...
>>
> Indeed, but it's not exactly the same as an /r/ before a vowel.
I should have mentioned how deeply rhotic I am!
Harvey
Matti Lamprhey
I watched the same programme and I too thought she'd said "porn" at first.
For me there is no difference in the pronunciation.
Matti
perchprism
You're still top-posting. Cut it out.
You hear that "r" around here a lot. "Warsh" for "wash" is a good example.
It seems to occur exclusively in the speech of people I don't like, which is
convenient for me.
--
Perchprism
(southern New Jersey, near Philadelphia)
M.J.Powell
Both the same to me.
Mike
--
M.J.Powell
Richard Fontana
> "Charles Dillingham" <c...@jxn.net> wrote in message
> news:9rl4me$1teq$1...@news.futuresouth.com...
> > Based upon what I have heard, both (some of) the British and
> > (some of) the people in the NYC area (especially New Jersey)
> > articulate a nonexistant "r" in many words ... e.g., "I sorr her
> > walking down the sidewalk."
> It seems to occur exclusively in the speech of people I don't like, which is
> convenient for me.
Would you hear "warsh" and "I sore him" from the same speakers
though? Those are developments coming out of separate accents or
dialects, "warsh" being a feature of rhotic Midland accents and the
"sore" for "saw" generally indicating the influence of coastal non-rhotic
accents. Of course in New Jersey these two sorts of accents, and others
besides, meet in the middle.
Steve Hayes
And I too would say them exactly the same, non-rhotically, of course.
Just think of all the fun we can have with puns on pause, paws and pores.
--
Steve Hayes from Tshwane, South Africa
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/7734/steve.htm
E-mail - see web page, or parse: shayes at dunelm full stop org full stop uk
Donna Richoux
Umm, sorry, I did fear that my post would be confusing to my fellow
Americans, but I wasn't really addressing them. It hasn't got anything
to do with an intrusive R -- she didn't put an R in anywhere. I imagine
a wav file of that particular vowel is at the AUE Website somewhere.
I am rather pleased to be assured by our British cousins that they do
indeed say "pawn" and "porn" alike. It means my mistake was a
confirmation of something, though it is tricky to explain. I know that
the British say "aw" differently than I say "aw" (I'm an "ah" person)
and I know that they say "or" differently than I say "or" (I'm rhotic,
naturally) but what I wasn't completely sure of was whether their
"differently"s were the *same*. The fact that I mentally substituted one
for the other implied that I guessed they were.
--
Best -- Donna Richoux
perchprism
"Richard Fontana" <rf...@sparky.cs.nyu.edu> wrote in message
news:Pine.GSO.4.21.011030...@sparky.cs.nyu.edu...
You're right. "I sore her" and the like are not heard. "Warsh" does seem to
be from a subspecies of the native South Jersey accent, but I haven't been
able to categorize it geographically.
perchprism
I was replying to that other Charles without having first corrected the
top-posting. Just goes to show you the harm in it.
"Pawn shop" becomes an audio Rorschach test. What were you thinking about on
your way to the kitchen? That's the real question in my mind.
Jonathan Jordan
<snip>
> I am not expert enough in all this to describe very clearly what I do, but
if I
> want to make the distinction I would describe the "pawn" vowel as being
> further forward.
>
> "Porn" and "port" seem to me to have exactly the same vowel in my speech
> (subject to the slight difference at the end because the terminating
consonant
> is so different).
>
> While we're at it, I make roughly the same distinction between "paw" and
"pore"
> as between "pawn" and "porn", but (experimenting a bit) the distinction is
> easier to hear. "Poor" is quite different again.
>
> I suspect that in a formal context, and certainly when singing, the
difference
> would become much clearer than it is in my casual speech. But then, I
can't
> remember that I have ever had occasion to sing about either "pawn" or
"porn".
>
> For reference, my speech is approx. modern RP, London upbringing 1960s,
with a
> touch of Yorkshire and a touch (or more than a touch by a1a standards) of
> Cockney.
>
So you would merge stressed "or" and "oar" but keep "awe" distinct?
Jonathan
dcw
Jonathan Jordan <jonatha...@st-annes.ox.ac.uk> wrote:
>So you would merge stressed "or" and "oar" but keep "awe" distinct?
You weren't asking me, but for what it's worth:
Old RP (even older than mine) would do this (/O@/ and /O:/ -- the "r"
corresponds to /@/), but I merge them all -- and "ore". A possible
exception is "drawer", that I semi-consciously try not to pronounce
like draw".
David
Jonathan Jordan
dcw <D.C....@ukc.ac.uk> wrote in message news:64...@myrtle.ukc.ac.uk...
on the OED Second Edition pronunciation, which appears to represent RP as it
was in the late 19th century. There the pattern is different: out of "oar",
stressed "or" and "awe" only "oar" gets /O@/ (I guess "ore" is like "oar"
because it is for me, but I didn't check it). The other two are given as
homophones, except for the linking /r/ which wouldn't have occurred after
"awe" in that accent.
So late 19th century RP seems to have been HINH (horse is not hoarse), but
rhyming "horse" with "sauce".
Jonathan
dcw
Jonathan Jordan <jonatha...@st-annes.ox.ac.uk> wrote:
>In another post in this thread (in reply to Matthew Huntbach), I commented
>on the OED Second Edition pronunciation, which appears to represent RP as it
>was in the late 19th century. There the pattern is different: out of "oar",
>stressed "or" and "awe" only "oar" gets /O@/ (I guess "ore" is like "oar"
>because it is for me, but I didn't check it). The other two are given as
>homophones, except for the linking /r/ which wouldn't have occurred after
>"awe" in that accent.
Since I don't have /O@/, I was really trying to reconstruct where it used to
be, so I'm not surpised that my "r" rule turns out to be wrong. Typical
hypercorrection.
>So late 19th century RP seems to have been HINH (horse is not hoarse), but
>rhyming "horse" with "sauce".
The Oxford Etymological (1969) has /hOrs/ and /hO(@)rs/ (with the /r/
optional depending on accent), which seems to catch them in the act of
merging.
David
Michael J Hardy
> I am rather pleased to be assured by our British cousins that they
> do indeed say "pawn" and "porn" alike.
I'm going to add this to my collection of evidence for my crackpot
theory that being non-rhotic is another case of failing to distinctions
in pronunciation that others make. So far I have only this:
father/farther
panda/pander
weston/western
agenda/a gender
career/Korea
In each case, I (and most English-speakers, I suspect) pronounce the
first word in each line so differently from the second that neither
can be mistaken for the other. And I suspect that in each case at least
some non-rhotic English-speakers pronounce the two homonymously.
For me the difference in the sounds of "pawn" and "porn" is not
just that one includes the "r" sound and the other does not, but also
that the vowels are different. When I was new to a.u.e., I was astonished
when someone said that "draw" rhymes with "snore", not only because, as
I pronounce them, one ends with the sound of a vowel and the other with a
consonant, but also because the two vowels are so different.
Mike Hardy
the guy with the eye
news:3bdee03f$0$1919$b45e...@senator-bedfellow.mit.edu...
> Donna Richoux (tr...@euronet.nl) wrote:
>
> > I am rather pleased to be assured by our British cousins that they
> > do indeed say "pawn" and "porn" alike.
>
>
> I'm going to add this to my collection of evidence for my crackpot
> theory that being non-rhotic is another case of failing to distinctions
> in pronunciation that others make. So far I have only this:
>
> father/farther
> panda/pander
> weston/western
> agenda/a gender
> career/Korea
There are many more, e.g.
source/sauce
court/caught
Is there a complete list of such words anywhere on the net?
Harvey V
wrote:
> Donna Richoux (tr...@euronet.nl) wrote:
>
>> I am rather pleased to be assured by our British cousins that they
>> do indeed say "pawn" and "porn" alike.
>
>
> I'm going to add this to my collection of evidence for my
> crackpot
> theory that being non-rhotic is another case of failing to
> distinctions in pronunciation that others make. So far I have only
> this:
>
-snip-
> career/Korea
That reminds me of a quiz question that I was marked "wrong" on, when I
answered "Bangladesh" to the question -- as I heard it -- of "In which
country is the city of Dacca?".
The twit meant "Dakar", and wouldn't accept that I was accurately
answering the alternative question which he'd clearly asked.
Harvey
Harvey V
<theguywi...@yahoo.com> wrote:
-snip-
> There are many more, e.g.
> source/sauce
> court/caught
Oh no! This is turning into the dreaded cot/caught thread!
Harvey
R H Draney
> I'm going to add this to my collection of evidence for my crackpot
>theory that being non-rhotic is another case of failing to distinctions
>in pronunciation that others make. So far I have only this:
>
>father/farther
>panda/pander
>weston/western
>agenda/a gender
>career/Korea
Circa thirty years ago, I remember falling down on a pronunciation
from the television show "UFO"...one character had just been put
through the wringer at a "fitness facility", and was looking forward
to a nice hot bath...his hopes were dashed when another inmate pointed
out "you know it's a /'sO: n@/ bath, don't you?"....
I heard it as "sonar bath", which fit the slightly SF setting of the
show, and would be just as unwelcome at that time as the "sauna bath"
he ended up with....r
a1a5...@sprint.ca
You just do not get it (as the FMW has it) do you? RP is RP. It is
not 19th century or modern or anything else. It is RP.
Jonathan Jordan
stressed "or", but doesn't join them with "awe". So there would seem to be
four main possibilities:
1. "oar", "or" and "awe" all distinct. This is my pronunciation.
2. "or" merged with "awe" (except for linking /r/) but "oar" distinct. OED
2nd edition.
3. "or" merged with "oar" but "awe" distinct. Katy (?) and most US
speakers.
4. All three merged (except for linking /r/). OED new edition, Modern RP.
There's a fifth possibility as well, but I'll leave it out unless anyone
claims it.
So what do other people do?
Jonathan
Donna Richoux
> "Pawn shop" becomes an audio Rorschach test. What were you thinking about on
> your way to the kitchen? That's the real question in my mind.
Nothing very exciting, I'm afraid. The additional data came so quickly
that she was talking about people pawning things, that I only had time
to think, "Porn? Did she mean pawn?" and to make a comment to my husband
about the similarity. He said later he had interpreted it first as
"pawn," but after my comment he did notice how it could have been
"porn."
That researcher was studying Renaissance Venice, where account books
show that apparently everyone spent a lot of time dealing in second-hand
goods, pawning things, and renting things for short occasions --
clothes, furnishings, etc.
I have to do a fair amount of translating to understand what I hear on
BBC, you understand -- shifting the vowels around, and adding (and
occasionally subtracting) r's. So I generally keep an open mind, and
assume that surprising words are some sort of misunderstanding over
pronunciation, not actually surprising content.
I don't see any other pairs of -awn/-orn words. There's "lawn" but
"lorn" is only poetic.
Little Boy Blue, asleep on the lawn,
The sheep's in the meadow, the cow's in the corn...
Bizarre, eh?
--
Best --- Donna Richoux
Richard Fontana
> Donna Richoux (tr...@euronet.nl) wrote:
>
> > I am rather pleased to be assured by our British cousins that they
> > do indeed say "pawn" and "porn" alike.
>
>
> I'm going to add this to my collection of evidence for my crackpot
> theory that being non-rhotic is another case of failing to distinctions
> in pronunciation that others make.
Like the cot/caught merger.
> So far I have only this:
>
> father/farther
> panda/pander
> weston/western
> agenda/a gender
> career/Korea
>
> In each case, I (and most English-speakers, I suspect) pronounce the
> first word in each line so differently from the second that neither
> can be mistaken for the other.
You are correct at least as regards native speakers, most of whom are
rhotic. Consider non-native speakers and it's a whole nother ball game.
> And I suspect that in each case at least
> some non-rhotic English-speakers pronounce the two homonymously.
>
> For me the difference in the sounds of "pawn" and "porn" is not
> just that one includes the "r" sound and the other does not, but also
> that the vowels are different.
Same in PPS. "Pawn" takes the lower "caught" vowel.
> When I was new to a.u.e., I was astonished
> when someone said that "draw" rhymes with "snore", not only because, as
> I pronounce them, one ends with the sound of a vowel and the other with a
> consonant, but also because the two vowels are so different.
In PPS "drawer" (furniture meaning) rhymes with "snore".
perchprism
We start the day in our house with ITN and BBC (We keep the shades drawn so
the police won't find out.). It's easy to see how "pawn" would throw you. We
like the way they handle place names. "Bang-KOK" is a favorite. I like
"Mary-land" with each part pronounced as a word. I could swear that the way
they say "New York" shows they're thinking just how new it *is* compared to
old York. Jersey, too. I've even heard "New Orleans" said "Nyew
Orr-lay-AHN." And the camerawork--they do a color piece on grass-roots
America and point the camera at the restored facades of some jerkwater Main
Street in Bumfuck, Iowa, just as some local yokel cruises past in his
cherry, 30's vintage stake-sided pickup truck. Yee-haw! Then, to be fair,
they show a hut by dirt lane in Nigeria, and wait for a cow to walk by. How
different from the home life of their dear queen, innit?
Harvey V
-snip-
>> I'm going to add this to my collection of evidence for my crackpot
>> theory that being non-rhotic is another case of failing to
>> distinctions in pronunciation that others make.
>
> Like the cot/caught merger.
I would like it placed on the record, m'lud, that I predicted this
about an hour and a quarter before it happened. (Or, at least,
according to the timings on my newsreader.)
[insert smug smiley here]
Harvey
Ben Zimmer
Or as George Harrison sang in "Love You To" off of "Revolver":
"A lifetime is so short
A new one can't be bought."
--Ben
Rob Bannister
> Listening to BBC 2 tonight, I thought I heard someone (an RP speaker)
> say "the porn business" when actually what she said was "the pawn
> business." I'd like to know if those two words really sound the same to
> RP speakers
Yes.
-- Rob Bannister
Rob Bannister
> "Charles Dillingham" <c...@jxn.net> wrote in message
> news:9rl4me$1teq$1...@news.futuresouth.com...
> > Based upon what I have heard, both (some of) the British and
> > (some of) the people in the NYC area (especially New Jersey)
> > articulate a nonexistant "r" in many words ... e.g., "I sorr her
> > walking down the sidewalk."
> >
>
> My brother-in-law, born and raised in Hicksville, L.I., served in the army
> in Korear. After 40 years in Wisconsin, he still pronounces hen fruit as
> "rawreggs".
Chookleberries.
-- Rob Bannister
Rob Bannister
But 'paw/poor/pore' are homophones in my speech, although I understand the
"correct" RP is to pronounce the last 2 with 2 syllables or a glide. However, my
pronunciation was never remarked on in London nor where I now live.
-- Rob Bannister
Perth, Western Australia.
Rob Bannister
Steve Hayes
>Linz (sp...@lindsayendell.co.uk) wrote:
>> On Tue, 30 Oct 2001 01:46:58 +0100, Donna Richoux wrote:
>
>> > Listening to BBC 2 tonight, I thought I heard someone (an RP speaker)
>> > say "the porn business" when actually what she said was "the pawn
>> > business." I'd like to know if those two words really sound the same to
>> > RP speakers, or was this (quite likely) just my unfamiliarity with
>> > British vowels? Plus the fact that I was headed toward the kitchen when
>> > she said it, so maybe didn't hear it clearly.
>
>> Yes, in most non-rhotic dialects of UK English pawn and porn have the
>> same vowel. I'd write it in ASCII IPA but I can't find my printout...
>
>I'd say they have slightly different vowels, though close enough
>that they could be confused. I think most British English speakers
>though non-rhotic would distinguish between "pore" and "paw". It is
>possibly a distinction that is disappearing so to younger people there
>would be no difference.
I think I'd say them differently as verbs -- pores (sweat-holes in the skin)
and paws. But there would be a difference if I said the dog paws me and I pore
over a book. The verb gets rhotic.
Steve Hayes
<jonatha...@st-annes.ox.ac.uk> wrote:
>I've just looked at the OED's pronunciation schemes. The Second Edition,
>which uses a version of the original First Edition system transcribed into
>IPA (which can be dated to about 1880), allows for the "oar" group to be
>distinguished from the other two, but seems to consistently give /O:/ for
>the first two, including "pawn" and "porn". The Third Edition uses a new
>system, which appears not to allow for any of these distinctions, giving the
>same vowel for "force", "north" and "thought". However, it pleases me by
>giving equal weight to the northern and southern pronunciations of "bath".
Bath is probably the English shibboleth.
Steve Hayes
<theguywi...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>There are many more, e.g.
>source/sauce
>court/caught
And apparently, for some, caught/cot.
But I'm CIC -- court is caught.
dcw
Rob Bannister <rob...@it.net.au> wrote:
>But 'paw/poor/pore' are homophones in my speech, although I understand the
>"correct" RP is to pronounce the last 2 with 2 syllables or a glide. However, my
>pronunciation was never remarked on in London nor where I now live.
"Old" RP had /pO:/, /pU@/, and /pO@/; "middle-aged" RP (e.g. mine) has merged
"paw" and "pore" (and "pour") as /pO:/, but keeps "poor" as /pU@/. Estuary
has /pO:/ for all of them.
This is getting like the Americans' CI(N)C wars.
David
dcw
Donna Richoux <tr...@euronet.nl> wrote:
>I have to do a fair amount of translating to understand what I hear on
>BBC, you understand -- shifting the vowels around, and adding (and
>occasionally subtracting) r's. So I generally keep an open mind, and
>assume that surprising words are some sort of misunderstanding over
>pronunciation, not actually surprising content.
Teletext subtitles can be helpful with funny accents.
David
dcw
Michael J Hardy <mjh...@mit.edu> wrote:
> I'm going to add this to my collection of evidence for my crackpot
>theory that being non-rhotic is another case of failing to distinctions
>in pronunciation that others make.
As an English non-rhotic speaker, I find the loss of /A./, the apparent
merger of /t/ and /d/, and the loss of /j/ in words like "due" in most
American accents much more confusing.
>weston/western
/'wEst@n/ and /'wEstV"n/ (if I've remembered the ASCII IPA -- the vowel
in "stern".
>career/Korea
/k@'ri@/ and /kA.r'i@/.
Not all unstressed vowels are /@/.
David
Matthew M. Huntbach
> I'm going to add this to my collection of evidence for my crackpot
> theory that being non-rhotic is another case of failing to distinctions
> in pronunciation that others make. So far I have only this:
> father/farther
> panda/pander
> weston/western
> agenda/a gender
> career/Korea
> In each case, I (and most English-speakers, I suspect) pronounce the
> first word in each line so differently from the second that neither
> can be mistaken for the other. And I suspect that in each case at least
> some non-rhotic English-speakers pronounce the two homonymously.
"Father/farther" are certainly homonyms to me. The next three would be
homonyms in casual speech, but in careful speech the final vowel would
be slightly different. "Career/Korea" are definitely not homonyms. The
first vowels are completely different.
Matthew Huntbach
Matthew M. Huntbach
> dcw <D.C....@ukc.ac.uk> wrote in message news:64...@myrtle.ukc.ac.uk...
> 1. "oar", "or" and "awe" all distinct. This is my pronunciation.
> 2. "or" merged with "awe" (except for linking /r/) but "oar" distinct. OED
> 2nd edition.
> 3. "or" merged with "oar" but "awe" distinct. Katy (?) and most US
> speakers.
> 4. All three merged (except for linking /r/). OED new edition, Modern RP.
> There's a fifth possibility as well, but I'll leave it out unless anyone
> claims it.
> So what do other people do?
3 also, though only in careful speech - 4 in casual speech.
Matthew Huntbach
K. Edgcombe
>with a
>> touch of Yorkshire and a touch (or more than a touch by a1a standards) of
>> Cockney.
>>
>So you would merge stressed "or" and "oar" but keep "awe" distinct?
>
Yes, i would. But if I were speaking in a context where it was vital to make
it clear that I meant "oar" and not "or", I *could* distinguish them in a way I
would expect to be intelligible to a hearer.
This suggests there are two levels of merging: one where the words are thought
to be merged beyond any possibility of distinction, and another where the
speaker does not normally distinguish but would have a consistent rule for
adjusting pronunciation if it became important to distinguish.
No doubt the professionals have words for all this.
Katy
Bob Cunningham
> But if I were speaking in a context where it was vital to make
>it clear that I meant "oar" and not "or", I *could* distinguish them in a way I
>would expect to be intelligible to a hearer.
>This suggests there are two levels of merging: one where the words are thought
>to be merged beyond any possibility of distinction, and another where the
>speaker does not normally distinguish but would have a consistent rule for
>adjusting pronunciation if it became important to distinguish.
One popular way to clarify a distinction beyond any doubt is to spell the
intended word.
I've experienced a similar problem with the words "our" and "are", which
are sometimes homonyms in some dialects of American English, including one
version of mine*.
We had a customer named, say, Richard Jones, and a department head named
Jones. On one occasion I wanted to say that I was referring to "our
Jones, not R. Jones". Realizing that this was quite ambiguous, and given
that "our" and "R" needed equal stress, I spelled out "our". Even if I
had said "our Jones, not Richard Jones" it could have caused some
perplexity, sounding like "R. Jones, not Richard Jones".
>No doubt the professionals have words for all this.
They might say that it's one facet of prosody (in the linguistics sense of
"prosody").
Footnote:
*(If I'm speaking carefully, I'll sometimes use the diphthong of "cow" in
"our"; otherwise I may use the "are" pronunciation I learned as a child.)
(I see now that _Webster's Third New International_ gives [A:r] as the
first of several pronunciations of "our" and as the stressed pronunciation
of "are".)
Bob Cunningham
said:
[ . . . ]
>(I see now that _Webster's Third New International_ gives [A:r] as the
>first of several pronunciations of "our" and as the stressed pronunciation
>of "are".)
I should have said "a stressed pronunciation" instead of "the stressed
pronunciation".
Jonathan Jordan
Bob Cunningham <exw...@earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:2quvttcueg1idvq9f...@4ax.com...
> On 31 Oct 2001 12:39:22 GMT, ke...@cus.cam.ac.uk (K. Edgcombe) said:
>
> > But if I were speaking in a context where it was vital to make
> >it clear that I meant "oar" and not "or", I *could* distinguish them in a
way I
> >would expect to be intelligible to a hearer.
>
and "hoarse" or "morning" and "mourning"?
Jonathan
R H Draney
Suddenly remembered a joke that hinges upon one of these, from "The
Goodies":
First character (examining a rock): "Looks like iron ore."
Second character: "Iron ore?"
First character: "Iron or...something else."
As I remember it, the substance turned out to be clotted cream....r
Michael J Hardy
> In PPS "drawer" (furniture meaning) rhymes with "snore".
I'm still not convinced that PPS exists.
But as I pronounce them, "drawer" never comes within a hundred
light-years of being mistakable for "draw", because "drawer" rhymes
with "snore".
Mike Hardy
Rob Bannister
> In article <9rmgdn$njo$1...@news.ox.ac.uk>,
> Jonathan Jordan <jonatha...@st-annes.ox.ac.uk> wrote:
> >>
> >> For reference, my speech is approx. modern RP, London upbringing 1960s,
> >with a
> >> touch of Yorkshire and a touch (or more than a touch by a1a standards) of
> >> Cockney.
> >>
> >So you would merge stressed "or" and "oar" but keep "awe" distinct?
> >
>
> Yes, i would. But if I were speaking in a context where it was vital to make
> it clear that I meant "oar" and not "or", I *could* distinguish them in a way I
> would expect to be intelligible to a hearer.
If you were up the proverbial creek, would you prefer an oar or a paddle?
-- Rob Bannister
Evan Kirshenbaum
> Yes, i would. But if I were speaking in a context where it was
> vital to make it clear that I meant "oar" and not "or", I *could*
> distinguish them in a way I would expect to be intelligible to a
> hearer.
This surprises me. I don't think that I could say
I said 'oar', not 'or'
in a way that would get listeners scoring better than chance as to the
order of the words. Similarly if you throw "ore" into the mix.
--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
HP Laboratories |Code should be designed to make it
1501 Page Mill Road, Building 1U |easy to get it right, not to work
Palo Alto, CA 94304 |if you get it right.
kirsh...@hpl.hp.com
(650)857-7572
Jerry Friedman
> On Tue, 30 Oct 2001 16:01:11 -0000, "Jonathan Jordan"
> <jonatha...@st-annes.ox.ac.uk> wrote:
...
> >So late 19th century RP seems to have been HINH (horse is not hoarse), but
> >rhyming "horse" with "sauce".
> >
> >Jonathan
> >
> >
> You just do not get it (as the FMW has it) do you? RP is RP. It is
> not 19th century or modern or anything else. It is RP.
I would guess that what you're calling RP was the typical or the most
highly respected pronunciation among upper-class and
university-educated people in Britain or some part of Britain at some
time in the past. I would also guess from comments on "modern RP"
that it couldn't be described that way now. Are my guesses right? If
they are, just out of curiosity, what was the period in history when
RP really was the pronunciation of the upper class?
--
Jerry Friedman
a1a5...@sprint.ca
Friedman) wrote:
It is not the pronunciation of the Upper Class, whatever that may be.
It is classless and regionless.
Murray Arnow
And foolish me thinking the BBC was a world set apart.
K. Edgcombe
The first pair would sound identical in casual speech, and the difference in
careful speech would be tiny, though I think it would be consistent. The other
pair are almost always different in my speech; I can just about imagine a
casual reference to "going into mourning" sounding like "going into
morning", but normally I'd think of them as sounding different.
On the other hand, the bourne from which no traveller returns sounds pretty
much like the born, when I say it, though I suppose I could, appropriately,
give it the mourning treatment.
Katy
Jerry Friedman
I'm willing to shrink my "upper class" category to people addressed as
"my lord" or "my lady", if that's more objective.
I'm not going to argue with you about "classless" and "regionless".
Let me rephrase my questions. There was surely a period before RP
existed. Was there a later period when most of the people described
above used that pronunciation? Am I right in inferring that most of
their present lordships and ladyships don't use RP (at least in fine
points such as "horse" versus "hoarse")? If both answers are yes, can
you say, roughly anyway, when the second period began and ended?
Just curious, as I said before.
--
Jerry Friedman
Jonathan Jordan
Jerry Friedman <jerry_f...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:96efe132.01110...@posting.google.com...
<snip>
>
> I'm not going to argue with you about "classless" and "regionless".
> Let me rephrase my questions. There was surely a period before RP
> existed. Was there a later period when most of the people described
> above used that pronunciation? Am I right in inferring that most of
> their present lordships and ladyships don't use RP (at least in fine
> points such as "horse" versus "hoarse")? If both answers are yes, can
> you say, roughly anyway, when the second period began and ended?
>
> Just curious, as I said before.
>
You could read John Wells's article "Our changing pronunciation" at
http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/wells/cardiff.htm
which describes changes that occurred in RP during the 20th century. I have
to say that I think the changes listed under "late 20th century" are
restricted to the South-East, so I'm not convinced that they can be regarded
as part of "regionless" RP.
This doesn't fit with Clarence's idea of RP as some sort of unchanging
superior pronunciation, but I've never seen anything written by a linguist
that does. There's a longer article called "The sociolinguistics of modern
RP" at
http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/estuary/trudgill.htm
which might also be of interest. It clearly debunks Clarence's nonsense
about RP being classless.
Jonathan
Jonathan Jordan
K. Edgcombe <ke...@cus.cam.ac.uk> wrote in message
news:9rsd9l$4vm$1...@pegasus.csx.cam.ac.uk...
"mourning" vowel. For me "hoarse", "mourning", "oar", "ore", "pork" all
have the same vowel, which is different from that of "horse", "morning",
"or", "fork". I'm interested to find someone outside Scotland and Ireland
with evidence of a similar pattern, even if only in careful speech.
Jonathan
K. Edgcombe
Jonathan Jordan <jonatha...@st-annes.ox.ac.uk> wrote:
>
>K. Edgcombe <ke...@cus.cam.ac.uk> wrote in message
>>
>pretty
>> much like the born, when I say it, though I suppose I could,
>appropriately,
>> give it the mourning treatment.
>>
>I say "bourne" most often in place names, like "Bournemouth", which has the
>"mourning" vowel. For me "hoarse", "mourning", "oar", "ore", "pork" all
>have the same vowel, which is different from that of "horse", "morning",
>"or", "fork". I'm interested to find someone outside Scotland and Ireland
>with evidence of a similar pattern, even if only in careful speech.
It hadn't occurred to me that "pork" and "fork" could have different vowels.
Nor "or" and "ore" except that of course in casual speech "or" can sometimes
become almost a schwa.
I think that, like you, I have the two vowels, but I group my words
differently.
Katy
a1a5...@sprint.ca
Friedman) wrote:
I find the two questions rather odd. Aristocrats, in your 'lordship'
sense, are a very mixed bunch, particularly these days, and some
clearly have never, and do not now, use RP. And, as clearly, there
was a period when _nobody_ used RP. But then, RP has nothing to do
with aristocracy.
The URL-providing Belfast/Scouse/"RP" ("loin" indeed!) claimant, who
regularly spouts his convictions and grotesque mispronunciations here,
may be willing to do some work on dates, and even to undertake a
sampling of the peerage for you. All _I_ can say is that the concept
was a codification of pronunciations recognised as 'right' and that
the codification was used in such works as the OED. The 'rightness' is
still recognised by, for example, various BBC speakers, but (since the
concept appears to have become adulterated by the very British notions
of class) that organisation, once a bastion of RP, seems to be backing
away from any ideal of a universal pronunciation of English. Alvar
Liddell wouldn't recognise the joint.
"Regionlessness" addresses only the United Kingdom, of course, as
Murray Arnow wryly points out.
Chris Waigl
<9rto82$b4t$1...@news.ox.ac.uk> :
>I say "bourne" most often in place names, like "Bournemouth", which has the
>"mourning" vowel. For me "hoarse", "mourning", "oar", "ore", "pork" all
>have the same vowel, which is different from that of "horse", "morning",
>"or", "fork". I'm interested to find someone outside Scotland and Ireland
>with evidence of a similar pattern, even if only in careful speech.
Just heard from Philip Hayton presenting BBC World News: "President
Bush said there will be no pores in the military action during
Ramadan".
[To my considerable embarrassment, I also only now learnt that
"poll" is pronounced the same as "pole". I had it rhyme with
"doll".]
Chris Waigl
--
chris waigl
I am now prosecuting some things with an engine I formerly
writ to you of. (Robert Boyle, to Hardlib 1659)
Jonathan Jordan
"mourning" group that I put in the "morning" group - for example "fort" and
"worn".
By the way, how strong is your Yorkshire influence - for example do you have
long or short A in "bath" etc.? I'm curious to know whether my horse/hoarse
split comes from Sheffield speech (where I grew up) or whether it came from
my Belfast-born father.
Jonathan
K. Edgcombe
Very slight. Parents from Lancashire-brought-up-in-Yorkshire, and Yorkshire;
both retained very slight traces after moving South. Mine is even more
attenuated and I only become aware of it in very occasional phrases. Most
people would put me down as London or thereabouts: long A.
I wonder whether anyone else is still listening to this dialogue?
Katy
Steve Hayes
>"Jonathan Jordan" <jonatha...@st-annes.ox.ac.uk> écrivit dans
><9rto82$b4t$1...@news.ox.ac.uk> :
>
>>I say "bourne" most often in place names, like "Bournemouth", which has the
>>"mourning" vowel. For me "hoarse", "mourning", "oar", "ore", "pork" all
>>have the same vowel, which is different from that of "horse", "morning",
>>"or", "fork". I'm interested to find someone outside Scotland and Ireland
>>with evidence of a similar pattern, even if only in careful speech.
>
>Just heard from Philip Hayton presenting BBC World News: "President
>Bush said there will be no pores in the military action during
>Ramadan".
>
>[To my considerable embarrassment, I also only now learnt that
>"poll" is pronounced the same as "pole". I had it rhyme with
>"doll".]
Perhaps that is why some people say you have to be on the voters role on order
to participate in one.
--
Steve Hayes from Tshwane, South Africa
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/7734/steve.htm
E-mail - see web page, or parse: shayes at dunelm full stop org full stop uk
John Holmes
"Jonathan Jordan" <jonatha...@st-annes.ox.ac.uk> wrote in message
news:9rlu7e$e4e$1...@news.ox.ac.uk...
>
> Harvey V <whhvs@*removethis*operamail.com> wrote in message
> news:Xns914A5CC9...@62.253.162.104...
> > On 30 Oct 2001, I take it that "Jonathan Jordan"
> > <jonatha...@st-annes.ox.ac.uk> wrote:
> > > Donna Richoux <tr...@euronet.nl> wrote in message
> > > news:1f22hrp.2lbhlj1qifbq1N%tr...@euronet.nl...
> >
> > -snip re: RP pronunciation of pawn/porn-
> > >>
> > > The RP pronunciations sound the same to me, and I would expect
most
> > > British dictionaries to give /pO:n/ for both. For me the vowels
> > > are the same, but there's something between it and the /n/ in
> > > "porn".
> >
> > Some of us call that an "r"...
> >
> Indeed, but it's not exactly the same as an /r/ before a vowel.
>
Do you mean something like just the hint of a schwa /pO:@n/ ?
--
Regards
John
O. Suture-Self
> [To my considerable embarrassment, I also only now learnt that
> "poll" is pronounced the same as "pole". I had it rhyme with
> "doll".]
I don't think it always is. I pronounce 'pole' and 'poll' differently.
I may be wrong, but I perceive a shift in pronunciation of 'poll'. Around
the time of the poll tax riots in the eighties, I'm sure it was usually
pronounced to rhyme with 'doll'. This summer, I noticed that most people
in the media pronounce it 'pole'. I may be misremembering.
--
nickey at aztaki dot com
Jonathan Jordan
O. Suture-Self <p...@tention.pike.org> wrote in message
news:memo.2001110...@wibble.wobble.com...
pronunciation as "pole", at least in the election sense. "Roll" also seems
to get the long /oU/.
Jonathan
Jonathan Jordan
John Holmes <hol...@smart.net.au> wrote in message
news:9s0fjb$fm3$2...@perki.connect.com.au...
>
> "Jonathan Jordan" <jonatha...@st-annes.ox.ac.uk> wrote in message
> news:9rlu7e$e4e$1...@news.ox.ac.uk...
<snip>
> > Indeed, but it's not exactly the same as an /r/ before a vowel.
> >
>
> Do you mean something like just the hint of a schwa /pO:@n/ ?
>
No. I've been deliberately vague about this, because I don't really know
what it is myself. It occurs after other vowels as well, in "are", "our",
"bird", "four", "poor", "water" etc.
Jonathan
Linz
> In article <1f23x2j.1nsosld294e5cN%tr...@euronet.nl>,
> Donna Richoux <tr...@euronet.nl> wrote:
>
> >I have to do a fair amount of translating to understand what I hear on
> >BBC, you understand -- shifting the vowels around, and adding (and
> >occasionally subtracting) r's. So I generally keep an open mind, and
> >assume that surprising words are some sort of misunderstanding over
> >pronunciation, not actually surprising content.
>
> Teletext subtitles can be helpful with funny accents.
Rab C Nesbitt springs to mind...
--
Men; hot water bottles that also take out the rubbish.
Linz
> I wonder whether anyone else is still listening to this dialogue?
*waves*
Linz
> "Jonathan Jordan" <jonatha...@st-annes.ox.ac.uk> écrivit dans
> <9rto82$b4t$1...@news.ox.ac.uk> :
>
> >I say "bourne" most often in place names, like "Bournemouth", which has the
> >"mourning" vowel. For me "hoarse", "mourning", "oar", "ore", "pork" all
> >have the same vowel, which is different from that of "horse", "morning",
> >"or", "fork". I'm interested to find someone outside Scotland and Ireland
> >with evidence of a similar pattern, even if only in careful speech.
>
> Just heard from Philip Hayton presenting BBC World News: "President
> Bush said there will be no pores in the military action during
> Ramadan".
Really? With an audible 'r'? How odd.
> [To my considerable embarrassment, I also only now learnt that
> "poll" is pronounced the same as "pole". I had it rhyme with
> "doll".]
Well, it's not a word one has to use very often, so I wouldn't worry
about it. I personally still shy away from "wan" because I can never
remember what the vowel is supposed to be...
Pat Durkin
I am... and wondering what you consider a long A.
For me the long vowel A is pronounced as in day,
and the short vowel as in cat, fat.
I don't have a description for "a" as in father, ah, arm (I think in
many dictionaries it is a with a dot over it.)
I know some experts would start describing many different versions of the
sounds of "a", depending on position (before or after certain consonants,
semi-consonants and semi-vowels, and vowels), but I prefer keeping things as
simple as I can.
What do you call a "broad" A ? Is that "a" as in fat cat, as in day ?
(or has that been replaced by the long A the way the "broad jump" has been
replaced by "long jump"?)
Jonathan Jordan
Pat Durkin <durk...@nothome.com> wrote in message
news:wJXE7.119907$My2.66...@news1.mntp1.il.home.com...
>
<snip>
> I am... and wondering what you consider a long A.
>
> For me the long vowel A is pronounced as in day,
> and the short vowel as in cat, fat.
> I don't have a description for "a" as in father, ah, arm (I think in
> many dictionaries it is a with a dot over it.)
>
> I know some experts would start describing many different versions of the
> sounds of "a", depending on position (before or after certain consonants,
> semi-consonants and semi-vowels, and vowels), but I prefer keeping things
as
> simple as I can.
>
> What do you call a "broad" A ? Is that "a" as in fat cat, as in day ?
> (or has that been replaced by the long A the way the "broad jump" has been
> replaced by "long jump"?)
>
In the context of the variable pronunciation of words such as "bath",
"path", "grass", "chance" etc. (there are quite a lot of them) the terms
short A and long A are often used to refer to the "cat" vowel (/a/ or /&/,
depending on your dictionary*) and the "father" vowel (usually /A:/*).
Within England the North and much of the Midlands have the short A, and the
South-East has the long A. I think of "broad A" as being an American term.
As for the vowel of "day", /eI/, nobody would use that in "bath" (or would
they?) so there isn't much confusion. In other contexts people might use
the term "long A" to refer to it, but it might cause confusion if it wasn't
clear that the vowel in question wasn't /A:/, and I would probably call /eI/
the "A-Y sound".
*I mean dictionaries that use IPA. Chambers uses <a> for "cat", <a macron>
for "day" and <a umlaut> for "father". I've no idea what American
dictionaries use.
Jonathan
Michael J Hardy
> Both Chambers and the OED online (second edition) give "poll" the same
> pronunciation as "pole", at least in the election sense. "Roll" also
> seems to get the long /oU/.
I've looked at OED online and I can't understand what they give
as the pronunciation. It does give the same pronunciation for "poll"
as for "pole".
But /oU/ ??? I'll be surprised if that's really what is meant.
/oU/ is the diphthong with a trailing glide used in "boat".
Mike Hardy
Bob Cunningham
<jonatha...@st-annes.ox.ac.uk> said:
>
>K. Edgcombe <ke...@cus.cam.ac.uk> wrote in message
>news:9rsd9l$4vm$1...@pegasus.csx.cam.ac.uk...
>> In article <9rp2n4$2lr$1...@news.ox.ac.uk>,
>> Jonathan Jordan <jonatha...@st-annes.ox.ac.uk> wrote:
>> >Bob Cunningham <exw...@earthlink.net> wrote in message
>> >news:2quvttcueg1idvq9f...@4ax.com...
Some careless poster in this thread has snipped without any indication
that he or she has snipped. It's okay to leave in an attribution without
leaving any of the attributee's remarks, but it's sloppy posting not to
give any indication of that snipping.
The reason I say it's okay to leave in the attribution, in my opinion, is
that I'm the one who said that K. Edgcombe said what I said she said. The
attribution is necessary for that reason.
>> >> On 31 Oct 2001 12:39:22 GMT, ke...@cus.cam.ac.uk (K. Edgcombe) said:
>> >> > But if I were speaking in a context where it was vital to make
>> >> > it clear that I meant "oar" and not "or", I *could* distinguish
>> >> > them in a way I would expect to be intelligible to a hearer.
>> >To Katy, whose message hasn't appeared yet on my server: what about
>> >"horse" and "hoarse" or "morning" and "mourning"?
>> The first pair would sound identical in casual speech, and the
>> difference in careful speech would be tiny, though I think it would
>> be consistent. The other pair are almost always different in my
>> speech; I can just about imagine a casual reference to "going into
>> mourning" sounding like "going into morning", but normally I'd think
>> of them as sounding different.
>> On the other hand, the bourne from which no traveller returns sounds
>> pretty much like the born, when I say it, though I suppose I could,
>> appropriately, give it the mourning treatment.
>I say "bourne" most often in place names, like "Bournemouth", which
>has the "mourning" vowel. For me "hoarse", "mourning", "oar", "ore",
>"pork" all have the same vowel, which is different from that of
>"horse", "morning", "or", "fork". I'm interested to find someone
>outside Scotland and Ireland with evidence of a similar pattern, even
>if only in careful speech.
>Jonathan
I've quoted in full the posting I'm responding to, only to show that no
remarks by me were quoted and there was no snippage of them indicated.
Let me say once more that I think it's good to use a special format to
indicate that a person's remarks have been completely omitted, but the
attribution has been left in just so that the chain of attributions is
preserved. That format consists of saying, to use the present posting as
an example:
>> >Bob Cunningham wrote that K. Edgcombe <ke...@cus.cam.ac.uk> wrote
>> >in message news:9rsd9l$4vm$1...@pegasus.csx.cam.ac.uk...
This seems to me to make it clear that nothing from Bob Cunningham is to
be quoted except the fact that he was the one who supplied the remainder
of the attribution chain.
Richard Fontana
I think we discussed this before, Mike. In your dialect "bowl",
"boat" and "bought" have three distinct phonemes, correct? I have only
two distinct phonemes there. More specifically, I have the /oU/ phoneme
in "boat" and "bowl", and the /O/ phoneme in "bought" and "bored". The
actual phones in "bought" and "bored" are quite different from one
another; the actual phones in "boat" and "bowl" are also different but not
as noticeably so. I think you'll find that most American English speakers
do not perceive a phonemic difference between the vowels in their
"boat" and their "bowl", and indeed I wonder whether the difference you
perceive is truly phonemic.
T. Max Devlin
>On Fri, 02 Nov 2001 21:27:51 GMT, Chris Waigl wrote:
>
>> "Jonathan Jordan" <jonatha...@st-annes.ox.ac.uk> écrivit dans
>> <9rto82$b4t$1...@news.ox.ac.uk> :
>>
>> >I say "bourne" most often in place names, like "Bournemouth", which has the
>> >"mourning" vowel. For me "hoarse", "mourning", "oar", "ore", "pork" all
>> >have the same vowel, which is different from that of "horse", "morning",
>> >"or", "fork". I'm interested to find someone outside Scotland and Ireland
>> >with evidence of a similar pattern, even if only in careful speech.
>>
>> Just heard from Philip Hayton presenting BBC World News: "President
>> Bush said there will be no pores in the military action during
>> Ramadan".
>
>Really? With an audible 'r'? How odd.
Well, I think it is inappropriate to use Bush as even a trivial example
of English usage in America. We ourselves make fun of him for his odd
pronunciations. Not to wet blanket the discussion, his speech on
October 11 was very notable for showcasing the fact that he cannot
pronounce the word "terror" correctly. Apparently (and in contrast to
the above instance) he is incapable of pronouncing the final 'r', and it
comes out "terra". "Terrorism" he doesn't seem to have trouble with.
>> [To my considerable embarrassment, I also only now learnt that
>> "poll" is pronounced the same as "pole". I had it rhyme with
>> "doll".]
>
>Well, it's not a word one has to use very often, so I wouldn't worry
>about it. I personally still shy away from "wan" because I can never
>remember what the vowel is supposed to be...
AFAIK, that one can shift and sway, and remains comprehensible. Whether
'wahn' (as in 'wand') or 'waan' (as in 'am') (forgive my naive
representation), as long as it doesn't become 'won' (as in 'one'), I
don't think anyone would bother second-guessing the pronunciation.
I'm still bemused by the idea of pronouncing 'poll' as in 'doll',
though. But then, I'm from Pennsylvania. ;-)
--
T. Max Devlin
*** The best way to convince another is
to state your case moderately and
accurately. - Benjamin Franklin ***
Richard Fontana
> Well, I think it is inappropriate to use Bush as even a trivial example
> of English usage in America. We ourselves make fun of him for his odd
> pronunciations. Not to wet blanket the discussion, his speech on
> October 11 was very notable for showcasing the fact that he cannot
> pronounce the word "terror" correctly. Apparently (and in contrast to
> the above instance) he is incapable of pronouncing the final 'r', and it
> comes out "terra". "Terrorism" he doesn't seem to have trouble with.
Are you suggesting that non-rhotic pronunciations are "incorrect"?
I suspect that this "terra" pronunciation is the result of an odd
hypercorrection, since Bush is generally not non-rhotic. A similar
pronunciation is Jim Lehrer (of the news show formerly known as _MacNeil
Lehrer_)'s pronunciation of his own surname. Jim Lehrer, like Bush, was
raised in Texas. My guess is that the "natural" pronunciation of such
words in such Texan dialects is monosyllabic /lEr/, /tEr/, and that
schoolteachers or parents got some kids to force it into a two-syllable
pronunciation by adding on a final schwa -- which would at one time been
considered prestigious in Texas even if not especially local. (I'm basing
this in part on my high school chemistry teacher's pronunciation of
"mirror", which as far as I could tell was the same as "mere"; he was
Texan.)
[...]
> I'm still bemused by the idea of pronouncing 'poll' as in 'doll',
> though. But then, I'm from Pennsylvania. ;-)
West or East? Do you merge "cot" and "caught"?
T. Max Devlin
>I've quoted in full the posting I'm responding to, only to show that no
>remarks by me were quoted and there was no snippage of them indicated.
And I, the inverse.
>Let me say once more that I think it's good to use a special format to
>indicate that a person's remarks have been completely omitted, but the
>attribution has been left in just so that the chain of attributions is
>preserved. That format consists of saying, to use the present posting as
>an example:
>
>>> >Bob Cunningham wrote that K. Edgcombe <ke...@cus.cam.ac.uk> wrote
>>> >in message news:9rsd9l$4vm$1...@pegasus.csx.cam.ac.uk...
>
>This seems to me to make it clear that nothing from Bob Cunningham is to
>be quoted except the fact that he was the one who supplied the remainder
>of the attribution chain.
I think that is horrific, actually. The quote characters on the left of
the text should be all that is required to understand attributions. For
example (an imaginary one):
>Eliot Gould said:
>>In a newsgroup, Max said:
>> Now I know what I'm doing.
Though the editing is awful (a snip symbol of some type should be given
after the second line), it is obvious that it is Eliot who said "now I
know what I'm doing", not Max. To say "Eliot said that Max said" is to
misrepresent the dialog; Eliot quoted, he did not say, that Max said
something, even though he did not quote what Max said.
Thanks for your time. Hope it helps.
T. Max Devlin
>On Sun, 4 Nov 2001, T. Max Devlin wrote:
>
>> Well, I think it is inappropriate to use Bush as even a trivial example
>> of English usage in America. We ourselves make fun of him for his odd
>> pronunciations. Not to wet blanket the discussion, his speech on
>> October 11 was very notable for showcasing the fact that he cannot
>> pronounce the word "terror" correctly. Apparently (and in contrast to
>> the above instance) he is incapable of pronouncing the final 'r', and it
>> comes out "terra". "Terrorism" he doesn't seem to have trouble with.
>
>Are you suggesting that non-rhotic pronunciations are "incorrect"?
I don't know what 'rhotic' means, as naive as that might make me,
unfortunately, so I cannot say. To me, the word 'correct' means
'accurate, consistent, and practical'. Would you consider it, then,
incorrect?
>I suspect that this "terra" pronunciation is the result of an odd
>hypercorrection, since Bush is generally not non-rhotic. A similar
>pronunciation is Jim Lehrer (of the news show formerly known as _MacNeil
>Lehrer_)'s pronunciation of his own surname.
Yes, definitely similar.
>[...](I'm basing
>this in part on my high school chemistry teacher's pronunciation of
>"mirror", which as far as I could tell was the same as "mere"; he was
>Texan.)
He would have been trying to say 'mira', but losing the last bit, just
as Bush lost the 'r'. We 'mericans are obviously linguistically lazy,
to a fault.
>[...]
>> I'm still bemused by the idea of pronouncing 'poll' as in 'doll',
>> though. But then, I'm from Pennsylvania. ;-)
>
>West or East? Do you merge "cot" and "caught"?
Eastern/central. These are different vowel sounds, to me, 'cot' (as in
'jot'), and 'caught' (as in 'sought').
Bob Cunningham
said:
>And I, the inverse.
Certainly, and that is quite clear from the count of "greater-than" signs.
But your example is flawed. In order to illustrate the point under
discussion you need to add an attribution that Max has quoted. Like:
>>Eliot Gould said:
>>>In a newsgroup, Max said:
>>>>Pete said:
>>>>>You don't know what you're doing.
>>> Now I know what I'm doing.
This leaves the reader searching for something that Max said, besides
saying that Pete said something.
Changing it to:
>>Eliot Gould said:
>>>In a newsgroup, Max said that Pete said:
>>>>>You don't know what you're doing.
>>> Now I know what I'm doing.
doesn't obscure who said what, but it does convey the thought that we have
only Max's word about what Pete said, and the phrase "Max said that Pete
said" is a clear signal that nothing else Max said is to be quoted.
Incidentally, your opening statement is also flawed:
>Strolling through alt.usage.english, I heard Bob Cunningham say to
>>On Fri, 2 Nov 2001 09:16:00 -0000, "Jonathan Jordan"
>><jonatha...@st-annes.ox.ac.uk> said:
It says that I said something to Jonathan Jordan. If I had wanted to say
something to Jonathan Jordan, I would have sent e-mail to him. Postings
in Usenet are addressed to all readers, not just to the person who
happened to write the posting being responded to.
Sophie Sensat
> "K. Edgcombe" <ke...@cus.cam.ac.uk> wrote in message
> news:9rv9hu$olo$1...@pegasus.csx.cam.ac.uk...
<snip>
> > Very slight. Parents from Lancashire-brought-up-in-Yorkshire, and
> > Yorkshire; both retained very slight traces after moving South. Mine is
> > even more attenuated and I only become aware of it in very occasional
> > phrases. Most people would put me down as London or thereabouts: long
> > A.
> >
> > I wonder whether anyone else is still listening to this dialogue?
>
> I am... and wondering what you consider a long A.
>
> For me the long vowel A is pronounced as in day,
> and the short vowel as in cat, fat.
> I don't have a description for "a" as in father, ah, arm (I think in
> many dictionaries it is a with a dot over it.)
Isn't the "arm" one different? I remember hearing somewhere [1] that the
A before an R is a separate sound in itself. But maybe that's what you
meant by:
> I know some experts would start describing many different versions of the
> sounds of "a", depending on position (before or after certain consonants,
> semi-consonants and semi-vowels, and vowels), but I prefer keeping things
> as simple as I can.
Sophie
[1] Apologies for being an under-informed AUE-poster[2].
[2] Feel free to start a hyphenation thread now.
--
scse...@simons-rock.edu
/\ ASCII ribbon campaign | no attachments
\/ against HTML mail | no stationery
/\ and postings | no graphics
O. Suture-Self
> Both Chambers and the OED online (second edition) give "poll" the same
> pronunciation as "pole", at least in the election sense. "Roll" also
> seems to get the long /oU/.
Then my unvoiced fear was correct - I've been doing it wrong. I must
listen more closely when I next hear 'deed-poll'.
Pat Durkin
"Sophie Sensat" <scse...@simons-rock.edu> wrote in message
news:1f2bmej.1tem5exjd3vojN%scse...@simons-rock.edu...
Yes, that is what I meant. Not being an expert, I don't want to get into
the sounds that affect the vowel "a", such as leading vowels (opening vowels
in a diphthong, such as "u" and "i" and closing vowels "i", "u" and
consonants before and after."r", "w") etc.
So I was counting the "a" in arm as the same as the "a" in father. (maybe
should have just spelled it "fah-ther", but some of the people here are
going to insist on hearing farther and fart-er, and I don't know if those
people are rhotics or non-s. Same with cat ..cart, or cot, and whatever
sounds they would hear or try to put into "day" by dragging the
pronunciation out. I could spell it die, or daeeee, of course.), but
really, I just want to know if anyone can explain or send me to a website
that explains (and maybe sounds out) a "Broad A" which I have heard
mention of in descriptions of some Eastern U.S. and some BrE accents, a Long
A as it was used in this thread, and a Short A. (I grew up with Long A
as in day, Short A as in fat, and don't know how someone would pronounce a
Broad A).
See the beginning quote from K. Edgcombe in this message. Can you tell
what she is pronouncing, and how she pronounces it??
It may have been Richard Fontana who suggested that for the U.S. lay person
learning to read, spell, and pronounce English we tend to simplify the
rules. I consider "a" to have 3 sounds, and leave the finer distinctions to
linguistic experts.
Michael J Hardy
> > as the pronunciation. It does give the same pronunciation for "poll"
> > as for "pole".
> >
> > But /oU/ ??? I'll be surprised if that's really what is meant.
> > /oU/ is the diphthong with a trailing glide used in "boat".
>
> I think we discussed this before, Mike. In your dialect "bowl",
> "boat" and "bought" have three distinct phonemes, correct?
Maybe that depends on what phonemes are. I don't distinguish
between different word by giving one the sound in "bowl" and the other
the sound in "boat", but if I pronounce "bowl" with the same sound that's
in "boat", it sounds like two syllables. I pronounce "bowl" as just _one_
syllable. Similarly, I pronounce "for" as just one syllable, and if I
put the long-o sound of "boat" into it, it comes out as two syllables.
The vowels in "for" and "bowl" sound identical to me, and differ from
the long-o sound in "boat". The difference is that in "boat" I say
that which I think is represented in ascii IPA by /oU/. And the "U"
in the ascii IPA representation is there for a reason! And that reason
is not present in the case of "for" and "bowl": those words have no
"w" sound immediately after the "o", whereas "boat" (also one syllable)
does have that sound.
> I have only
> two distinct phonemes there. More specifically, I have the /oU/ phoneme
> in "boat" and "bowl", and the /O/ phoneme in "bought" and "bored". The
> actual phones
This is where I am uncertain of the meanings of these words.....
> in "bought" and "bored" are quite different from one another;
> the actual phones in "boat" and "bowl" are also different but not
> as noticeably so.
If you mean what I think you mean, I'm guessing that "bowl" and
"for" have completely different vowel phonemes for you, but identical
phones. And the reason why that phone becomes the same phoneme, for you,
as the one in bought, is that in "for" there is an "r".
> I think you'll find that most American English speakers
> do not perceive a phonemic difference between the vowels in their
> "boat" and their "bowl", and indeed I wonder whether the difference
> you perceive is truly phonemic.
Maybe it's not phonemic, but I can't help hearing it.
Mike Hardy
Donna Richoux
[snip]
> really, I just want to know if anyone can explain or send me to a website
> that explains (and maybe sounds out) a "Broad A" which I have heard
> mention of in descriptions of some Eastern U.S. and some BrE accents, a Long
> A as it was used in this thread, and a Short A. (I grew up with Long A
> as in day, Short A as in fat, and don't know how someone would pronounce a
> Broad A).
The cheating answer to your question is that what some Americans would
call a "broad A" is the "ah" sound in "father".
The better answer is that "long" and "short" and "broad" vowels have no
scientific or universal meaning. The Americans (mostly) mean one thing
by them, the British mean another, and I've seen various people use them
to mean actual length. It's best just to avoid the words here unless you
label very clearly what you mean by them.
Where you'll find vowel sounds linked to sound files (.wav and other) is
at the AUE Website
http://go.to/aue/
Look under "ASCII IPA".
There are certain drawbacks in trying to use ASCII IPA symbols, but it
can sure prevent argument if you do.
>
> See the beginning quote from K. Edgcombe in this message. Can you tell
> what she is pronouncing, and how she pronounces it??
I looked back and I honestly couldn't see what you were referring to --
too many layers and too much snippage. So I looked at the earlier posts.
Jonathan Jordan (UK) asked Katy (UK) whether she put a "long A" in
"bath." What he is calling a "long A" is what I (US) would call a "broad
A". He's asking, does she say "bahth" (as we say "father") or "b&th"
(where & is the sound in "cat")?
You've noticed how many English people -- but not all! -- say "bahth"
and "grahss" and "cahstle"? That's the subject they were discussing.
>
> It may have been Richard Fontana who suggested that for the U.S. lay person
> learning to read, spell, and pronounce English we tend to simplify the
> rules. I consider "a" to have 3 sounds, and leave the finer distinctions to
> linguistic experts.
If you are going to talk about other accents, like Katy's, you have to
learn more sounds -- the British As and Os are quite different from
American ones.
Pronunciation threads are the devil.
Have you told us where you are from? That certainly affects how many
vowels you hear.
--
Best --- Donna Richoux
Jonathan Jordan
Michael J Hardy <mjh...@mit.edu> wrote in message
news:3be478dd$0$3949$b45e...@senator-bedfellow.mit.edu...
phonemic notation, which use the same symbols in different ways.
The phonetic notation [oU] represents, as you put it, a diphthong with a
trailing glide, as in many pronunciations of "boat". When considering the
phoneme which occurs in "boat", which is (in most English accents) the same
as the one in "bowl" we choose a symbol which is representative of a
frequent realisation of the phoneme, but which may not be particularly
appropriate for all realisations of that phoneme.
I use /oU/ for this phoneme, but in "bowl" my actual pronunciation is
something like [A.:], a much lower vowel and without much of a glide. Some
instinct still suggests that the vowels of "bowl" ([bA.:l]) and "boat"
([bo:t] or [boUt] - I think I vary between the diphthong and the pure vowel)
are the same, even though they are phonetically quite different.
Similarly, the Estuary English pronunciation of "bottle" [bA.?o] can still
be phonemically written /bA.tl/ or /bA.t@l/ (I'm not sure about the syllabic
L) where [?] (the glottal stop) is an "allophone" of /t/ quite different
from [t], and [o] is an "allophone" of /l/ quite different from [l].
I should qualify this by saying that I'm not an expert, but I hope this
helps.
Jonathan
John Holmes
I you ever do decide what it is, please let me know.
There was a discussion here a while ago about accents that pronounce 'r'
as 'w' (as in wascally wabbit, or Frank Muir's accent). I wondered at
that time if such people are using the 'non-rhotic r' in all positions,
rather than a 'w'. Whatever that sound is, I think it is the same as we
were referring to above.
If I pronounce an 'r', and then move my tongue a bit forward and
flattish, then I think that is about the sound, and it is almost the
same as I would pronounce a schwa. You can't always hear it in
non-rhotic pronunciation because it is apt to merge with the preceeding
vowel, but we can accentuate it a bit if forced to distinguish pairs
such as pawn and porn. We certainly think of ourselves as pronouncing
*something* where the 'r' is, a fact which rhotic speakers find hard to
appreciate.
--
Regards
John
T. Max Devlin
[...]
>So I was counting the "a" in arm as the same as the "a" in father. (maybe
>should have just spelled it "fah-ther", but some of the people here are
>going to insist on hearing farther and fart-er, and I don't know if those
>people are rhotics or non-s. Same with cat ..cart, or cot, and whatever
>sounds they would hear or try to put into "day" by dragging the
>pronunciation out. I could spell it die, or daeeee, of course.), but
>really, I just want to know if anyone can explain or send me to a website
>that explains (and maybe sounds out) a "Broad A" which I have heard
>mention of in descriptions of some Eastern U.S. and some BrE accents, a Long
>A as it was used in this thread, and a Short A. (I grew up with Long A
>as in day, Short A as in fat, and don't know how someone would pronounce a
>Broad A).
My own uninformed guess would be that 'broad A' is really just a schwa
signified by an 'a' character as opposed to some other vowel.