Long A or Short A Vowel Sound?
Meg Anne
vowel sound that occurs in words such as the following: bank,
blanket, bang, tank, tango, rank, blank, thanks, etc. One group
adamantly believes this to be similar to a LONG A sound, while the
other group thinks it's the SHORT A sound. We have found conflicting
information on this topic when consulting various dicationaries and
pronunciation guides. Is it possible that the sound is neither the
short or long A and might have a phonetic sound/category of its own?
Personally, I feel it is much closer to a long A than short A, but it
seems to be kind of an individual thing (you hear it the way you hear
it, regardless of what others say or what the dicationary says...)
Any insightful comments on this would be most appreciated. Thank you.
R H Draney
The words "long" and "short" in connection with English vowels are fraught with
peril anyway...some use them to distinguish between the pre- and
post-vowel-shift pronunciations, so that a long I is what they hear in
"machine"....
I, along with most of the west coast of the US in the 60s, was taught that the
vowel in the middle of most three-letter words was "short", and the same word
with a "silent e" on the end had the "long" version of the same vowel...(in the
cases of "a", "i" and "o", the long vowel in this sense is actually a
diphthong)...thus, "short a" was the vowel heard in "fat" and "long a" the sound
in "fate"....
Your example words all have the same consonant following the "a" vowel: the one
usually spelled "ng" and written in ASCII IPA as /N/...the fact that this
consonant isn't normally spelled with a single letter may be throwing off the
schooled lessons, but try it with some of the other vowels...is the vowel in
"sing" more like the one in "sit" or in "site"?...how about the one in
"long"?...more like "lob" or "lobe"?...
Clearly, if one listens closely, the vowel before /N/ isn't *exactly* the short
vowel, but it seems closer to it in these cases than to the long vowel, and
there's something to be said for extending the same logic to the "a" vowel in
the same position...you can try this line of reasoning with those who claim they
hear "thanks" as something like "thaynks", but you may not convince them...some
people will hear identical vowel sounds in different ways depending upon their
own accents, and this one in particular seems subject to regional effects....r
david56
We have a tame court transcriber who will no doubt be along in a
minute, but I have to ask you what variety of English you are
referring to?
--
David
=====
Default User
I disagree. To me, "bank" sounds much more like "bat" than "bait". It's
a short 'a' with an ng sound drawing it out a bit.
Brian Rodenborn
Mark Brader
> My fellow court reporting students and I are in disagreement over the
> vowel sound that occurs in words such as the following: bank,
> blanket, bang, tank, tango, rank, blank, thanks, etc. One group
> adamantly believes this to be similar to a LONG A sound, while the
> other group thinks it's the SHORT A sound.
To me, those are all examples of the short A.
--
Mark Brader, Toronto "A secret proclamation? How unusual!"
m...@vex.net -- Arsenic and Old Lace
John Holmes
The simple answer is that for most English-speakers it is the short A.
Your accent might be different, though.
--
Regards
John
Skitt
I have found that having a different native language makes it difficult to
understand the "long vowel vs. short vowel" distinctions used for English.
To me, influenced as I am by my native tongue, many of those distinctions
involve what I'd call completely different vowels. You see, in my native
language there are actual short and long versions (the latter indicated with
a diacritic) of each vowel, and *only* the duration of that vowel is what
is different. The "a" in "bat" and "bark" are completely different vowels,
represented with different letters ("e" and "â", respectively). The short
"a" sound ("a" without a diacritic) would be as the "u" in "butt"; the long
"a" (with the diacritic) would be as in "bark".
It's very confusing to me when I see the terms "short" and "long" describing
differences in vowel sounds involving other aspects than only their
duration.
This confusion on my part has caused misunderstandings in the past.
An attempt to describe Latvian vowel sounds:
short as in long as in
a cut a bark
e bet e Irish "gate" - no diphthong)
another e cat e like "dad", but drawn out)
i hit e beet
o * - - *(something like a "ua" diphthong)
another o BrE rot o boat (foreign-derived words only)
u put u boot
The distiction between when to use the different "e" pronunciations has to
be learned, but there are definite rules for it.
Oh well, I tried.
--
Skitt (in Hayward, California)
www.geocities.com/opus731/
Paul Rooney
>Meg Anne writes:
>> My fellow court reporting students and I are in disagreement over the
>> vowel sound that occurs in words such as the following: bank,
>> blanket, bang, tank, tango, rank, blank, thanks, etc. One group
>> adamantly believes this to be similar to a LONG A sound, while the
>> other group thinks it's the SHORT A sound.
>
>To me, those are all examples of the short A.
To me also, in northern England. As far as I know they are always
short in southern England too. I have never heard any Brit pronounce
any of them with a long a.
--
Paul
My Lake District walking site (updated 29th September 2003):
Dena Jo
> We have a tame court transcriber
Who are you calling tame?
> who will no doubt be along in a
> minute
Well, a day, anyway.
It's much, much closer to a short A sound than a long A sound. But the
real question is, why would you even consider writing it with a long A
sound? Imagine seeing PWAEUPBG in your notes instead of PWAPBG.
--
TKAOEPB/A SKWROE RBGS SKOEP/EUFT
Delete "delete.this.for.email" for email.
Meg Anne
from people all over. I appreciate everyone's thoughts on this. As a
new court reporting student (only half way through theory), I find
myself overanalyzing things sometimes. I realize this won't happen
when I'm in speed classes, as I won't have time to think about things,
I'll just write them.
I definitely agree that writing it with the short A is easier and the
preferable way to go. However, I seem to disagree with the masses
here, as to the actual sound.... Despite the way these words are
spelled, I inarguably "hear" the LONG A when these words are spoken
(by myself or by anyone else, indicative of the fact that it's just
not my accent, which is just a standard northeastern/way upstate New
York one...). So much and so clearly that it seems almost
inconceivable to me that someone could actually hear a "short a"
sound. For example, I hear the "A" in bank, language, anguish, sang,
etc.... I truly hear BAY NK, LAY NGUAGE, SAY NG, etc.
I was always taught that when you hear the actual letter, that means
it is the long sound. On the other hand, I was taught that the true
short vowel A sound is in words such as cat, hat, land, crack, after,
etc. To me, the sounds are completely different than the one in bank,
sang, angst, language, etc. I hear what I'd consider to be closer to
the long sound in them.
Thanks to all who are responding with your input. I guess this is just
one thing I'll always disagree with when it comes to our language.
It's tough to be "wrong" about something I feel so strongly about....
Oh well, c'est la vie!
Meg (original message poster)
Dena Jo <TPUBGTH.delete...@yahoo.com> wrote in message news:<Xns9488CE70...@130.133.1.17>...
david56
> On 06 Feb 2004, david56 posted thus:
>
> > We have a tame court transcriber
>
> Who are you calling tame?
I don't recall being bitten by you.
--
David
=====
Dena Jo
We were in a public place.
--
Dena Jo
Delete "delete.this.for.email" for email.
Dr Robin Bignall
<TPUBGTH.delete...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>On 08 Feb 2004, david56 posted thus:
>
>> Dena Jo expostulated:
>>
>>> On 06 Feb 2004, david56 posted thus:
>>>
>>> > We have a tame court transcriber
>>>
>>> Who are you calling tame?
>>
>> I don't recall being bitten by you.
>
>We were in a public place.
And there's a taboo about eating in public? Or maybe you're a vegetarian.
--
wrmst rgrds
Robin Bignall
Quiet part of Hertfordshire
England
Evan Kirshenbaum
Phonemically, it doesn't matter, as there are, to the best of my
knowledge, no words that are distinguished by having /&/ (the "short"
A) or /eI/ (the "long" A) before /N/ (the "ng" sound, which also
appears in most words with "nk"). Since there is therefore no
potential ambiguity, individual speakers are free, when they construct
their internal lexicon, to decide for themselves which phoneme to use,
and different speakers doubtless make different choices. I would be
unsurprised to read responses from people who use both as well as from
those who consider it to be /E/ (the "short E" of "bet").
For myself, I consider it to be /eI/ (long A), and I'm pretty sure
that that's the way it was presented when I was in elementary school
in Chicago in the early '70s. Merriam-Webster's Collegiate
Dictionary, on the other hand, calls it /&/ (short A).
--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
HP Laboratories |...as a mobile phone is analogous
1501 Page Mill Road, 1U, MS 1141 |to a Q-Tip -- yeah, it's something
Palo Alto, CA 94304 |you stick in your ear, but there
|all resemblance ends.
kirsh...@hpl.hp.com | Ross Howard
(650)857-7572
Jonathan Jordan
news:1xp3nb...@hpl.hp.com...
How would you expect people who consider it to be /E/ to treat
"length" and "strength"? I have /E/ in those, but /a/ (equivalent to
your /&/) in the words listed by Meg Anne.
> For myself, I consider it to be /eI/ (long A), and I'm pretty sure
> that that's the way it was presented when I was in elementary school
> in Chicago in the early '70s. Merriam-Webster's Collegiate
> Dictionary, on the other hand, calls it /&/ (short A).
Other Americans have said that they consider it to be /eI/. As a BrE
speaker, though, that seems a very unnatural analysis to me.
What about "sing" etc.? /I/ or /i/?
Jonathan
Apurbva Chandra Senray
> i hit e beet
> u put u boot
Of course in English (general American anyway), these pairs of
vowels are _not_ distinguished simply by length. The so-called "short"
ones are lower slightly centralized and they can be stretched out
while remaining distinguishable from the "long" vowels.
To the OP, I would like to ask where you're from. To me, all
these words take the /&/ vowel in "cat." However, I know from the
rural northeastern Ohio/northwestern Pennsylvania and the Appalachian
regions who would pronounce them more like /ei/ like in "Kate." Most
of them also pronounce "milk" as "melk" [mElk] and often use the
"liquid L" in the initial and medial positions.
Meg Anne
Thank you for your input. If OP means "original poster," then that's
me. I am from upstate New York originally (way upstate, north of
Albany)... I have no regional accent that I'm aware of - I talk just
like they do on television and in the movies (that's the best
comparison I can think of since to me that just represents mainstream
America...) My mom, who's from the same geographical area, disagrees
with me on the vowel sound within the words in question, so I can't
believe it's a regional thing that's causing me this dispute. Despite
all the feedback I've gotten to the contrary, I still firmly believe
that it's the long a sound. I've tried hard to be convinced
otherwise, but I just can't be swayed on this.
My latest example - the word "language." It's so obviously a long a
sound to me. Yet the dictionaries and the rest of the world seem to
disagree with me. LAIN GWJ (I don't know the proper phonetic
symbols...) is how I hear it (no matter who is speaking it), not LAN
GWJ. Oh well, I guess this is just one of those things that I'll go
the rest of my life disagreeing with everyone on. Thanks again.
Meg Anne
Meg Anne
Thank you for your feedback on this. I must also say thank you for
being the first respondent who actually hears the long A in those
words. I was beginning to think that I was alone in this world with
regard to that. I attended elementary school in upstate New York in
the mid-seventies, and I think that must be how I learned it as well.
Oddly enough, though, my mother (from the same region and an English
teacher by profession) disagrees with me, and says she hears the short
A sound in the words in question.
I see what you mean about there being no potential ambiguity with the
use of either short or long A in those words ending with ng/nk. And I
guess I wouldn't be at all concerned about it, except that as a fairly
new court reporting student, I'm in the process of training myself to
clearly hear and define sounds within words. This will help me in my
schooling, since a lot of what we write is based on phonetics, not
necesarily spelling.
The subject of the sounds in these words came up, and I just haven't
been able to let it go. Others in my class were actually laughing at
me when I stated I believed it was the long A sound, as if it were
totally incomprehensible that one could even imagine that! I, on the
other hand, think it's amazing that so many people actually hear the
short A sound in these words.... I think of the short A as in words
such as cat, drag, tackle, and match, etc. That's nothing like the
sound that is present in language, bank, angst, tank, etc. Others can
call me crazy, but I just don't hear any similarity there. I was
always taught that when you hear the vowel itself in the word, then it
is the long vowel sound that is present. I clearly hear the A in all
of those words.
Thanks again.
Meg Anne
ps. I consulted Merriam Webster's online edition of their unabridged
dictionary, and while they do classify a short A sound for my original
words in question, they also give a secondary pronunciation,"AI," in
their pronuncation guide for some of those words. This is the only
dictionary I can find that even slightly supports my case. I would
LOVE to find another source that supports it even more...
John Lawler
Dear Meg Anne,
You neglected to tell us what country you were learning court recording
in (and therefore what dialect of English you were learning to court
record), but I'll assume you're an American, because if you were British
you'd have access to reasonable dictionaries with IPA pronunciations.
Americans are taught that there are two kinds of 'A' -- long and short.
This used to be true. In Middle English, about 600 years ago. In Middle
English, some vowels were long (i.e, they actually took longer to say) and
some were short (they took less time to say). But along about 1400-1550,
something happened to the pronunciation of English long vowels (but not the
short ones). This is called The Great Vowel Shift, and is one of the major
reasons why:
1) Middle English *looks* a lot like Modern English,
but
2) Middle English *sounds* really different from Modern English,
and
3) Modern English spelling sucks.
When printing came along, at the end of the 1500s, the orthographic (i.e,
spelling) conventions that were adopted and became standardized in print
were those of *MIDDLE ENGLISH*, not the newfangled Modern English. So we're
actually spelling Middle English -- and rather well, in fact. It's just
that we're not *speaking* Middle English any more, and the sounds have
changed. A lot.
In particular, all the Middle English vowels became short, but not before
they changed into different vowels, pronounced in different places in the
mouth. That's why the names of English vowels are different from the names
of vowels in all other languages -- we use the Modern English pronunciations
of the long vowels, which have shifted from their original European values.
So, English 'long A' is actually pronounced the same as /e/ is in
European languages, and has the same name, and English 'long E' is
pronounced the same as /i/. Think of Italian or French or German or
Spanish. They still use the normal values; they didn't go through The Great
Vowel Shift. But the shift only affected 'long' vowels; 'short' vowels
stayed where they originally were in English.
And now we get to your question. In American English, the vowel sound
that appears in
bank, blanket, bang, tank, tango, rank, blank, thanks
is the low front vowel that corresponds to 'Short A'; actually there was a
special letter used for this sound in Old English, called 'Ash', and written
with an 'a' and an 'e' joined together (æ), like they are sometimes in
Encyclopædia or Cæsar. That's the symbol for that vowel in the
International Phonetic Alphabet, which, like the metric system, is used
everywhere in the world -- except the United States, because it wasn't
invented here.
You should know, however, that many words that have an /æ/ vowel in
American English have a different vowel in British English, which has rather
different vowels from American English. For example, the vowel in the
stressed second syllable of 'banana' and the vowel in 'man' are the same in
American English, but different in British English.
So, the real answer is that it's 'Short A' in America, but elsewhere all
bets are off. And of course, since it's neither short nor /e/, 'Short A' is
a really bad name for it. The moral of this story is: learn IPA. It'll
definitely help you use a transcriber, not to mention Gregg. And *don't*
rely on American dictionaries for pronunciation information. They're
hopeless.
I had a query on "Ask-A-Linguist" about this recently; you can see my
answer at
http://cf.linguistlist.org/cfdocs/new-website/LL-WorkingDirs/ask-ling/message-details2.cfm?AsklingID=200306058
-John Lawler http://www.umich.edu/~jlawler U Michigan Linguistics Dept
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
"I have traveled more than anyone else, and I have noticed that even the
angels speak English with an accent." - Mark Twain, 'Following the Equator'
Charles Riggs
(John Lawler) wrote:
<Fascinating and educational, to me anyway, description of the Great
Vowel Shift>
The degree of erudition sometimes displayed in this newsgroup is
something to behold. I'd give this post, if I could, the Most
Interesting Post of the Winter award.
--
Charles Riggs
Email address: chriggsŚatŚeircomŚdotŚnet
Cece
People talk funny in Chicago. :-) Indianapolis folks pronounce words
correctly.
To me, those words use short a. The following consonant modifies it,
but just a tad, not enough for the IPAlphabet to notice it (even if
the IPAssociation recognized American English).
Cece
Cece
>
In American English phonics classes (where children are taught to
sound written words out), the beginning assumption is that every vowel
has two pronunciations. What that actually means is that two
different pronunciations are represented by each symbol. English has
44 phonemes, more or less, and only 26 letters; some of the phonemes
are represented by digraphs and some are represented by the same
letter.
"Long" and "short" have nothing to do with how long the vowel is held.
"A long vowel says its name," and the short vowel is the other
pronunciation. Of course, the symbols represent at least three
phonemes each, and we have special names for those.
i is either long: aI or ai, or short: I. Or, sometimes, usually in
words recently stolen from French, i (which we don't have a special
term for.
e is either long: i, or short: E. Or, sometimes, in words recently
stolen from French and usually retaining the acute accent mark, e
("like a long a").
a is long: eI or ej, or short: ash. Or, often, "broad": A (there are,
in fact, two versions of this sound, very close to each other), the
same as the "short o."
u is long: ju, or short: V. Or, sometimes, "half-long": u.
I hope this helps.
Cece
Skitt
> "Skitt" wrote:
You see, that's the part that doesn't make sense to Latvian. It's a meaning
of those words that has been subverted by linguists. The primary meaning is
otherwise usually referring to length or duration.
> "A long vowel says its name," and the short vowel is the other
> pronunciation. Of course, the symbols represent at least three
> phonemes each, and we have special names for those.
>
> i is either long: aI or ai, or short: I. Or, sometimes, usually in
> words recently stolen from French, i (which we don't have a special
> term for.
>
> e is either long: i, or short: E. Or, sometimes, in words recently
> stolen from French and usually retaining the acute accent mark, e
> ("like a long a").
>
> a is long: eI or ej, or short: ash. Or, often, "broad": A (there are,
> in fact, two versions of this sound, very close to each other), the
> same as the "short o."
>
> u is long: ju, or short: V. Or, sometimes, "half-long": u.
>
> I hope this helps.
Oh, I understand it. It just doesn't make sense, but that's what makes
English "interesting".
Skitt
> (Apurbva Chandra Senray) wrote:
Isn't your vowel in "Anne" the same as that in "language"? Mine is.
Apurbva Chandra Senray
> I have no regional accent that I'm aware of - I talk just
> like they do on television and in the movies (that's the best
> comparison I can think of since to me that just represents mainstream
> America...) My mom, who's from the same geographical area, disagrees
> with me on the vowel sound within the words in question, so I can't
> believe it's a regional thing that's causing me this dispute.
It's not quite as simple as that. There isn't one, uniform
general American accent. There's plenty of room for variation, even if
you don't have a specifically regional accent.
> Despite all the feedback I've gotten to the contrary, I still firmly
> believe that it's the long a sound. I've tried hard to be convinced
> otherwise, but I just can't be swayed on this.
I think you're approaching this the wrong way. You say it one
way; I and many others you've consulted say it another way. It's not
an issue of "belief" or "convincing" or "swaying."
> My latest example - the word "language." It's so obviously a long a
> sound to me. Yet the dictionaries and the rest of the world seem to
> disagree with me. LAIN GWJ (I don't know the proper phonetic
> symbols...)
I'd write what you're trying to illustrate as [leINwIdZ]
> is how I hear it (no matter who is speaking it), not LAN
> GWJ.
[l&NwIdZ]
rzed
news:c0gius$174ag0$1...@ID-61580.news.uni-berlin.de:
As I hear it, it's hard to separate the vowel in "lang" from the
vowel-plus-starting-into-'ng'. It really seems to create a quick
'ae' diphthong that might sound more like the 'a' in 'Anne' or the
a in 'mane' depending on which half of the diphthong is held
longest. For my own pronunciation, I wouldn't describe the 'a' in
'lang' as a long a (the vowel in 'laing'), but it's not the same as
the 'a' in 'sandwich', either. Someone used 'half-long'as a
descriptive term; maybe that's what this is.
--
rzed
Peter Moylan
[snipping most of an excellent explanation]
> Americans are taught that there are two kinds of 'A' -- long and short.
And, to the best of my knowledge, non-Americans are not taught this
terminology, which can lead to confusion in an international newsgroup.
To me, an Australian, 'short a' is the sound in /k&n/ (is able), and
'long a' is the sound in /k&:n/ (a metal container).
I don't think we were taught any terminology for this at all in
primary school. We were taught that an 'e' at the end of a word
changed the sound ('mat' vs 'mate'), and that some letters had a
variety of different pronunciations ('moth', 'mother', 'most'), but
none of these phenomena had any labels attached. One labelled class
we did get taught about was the diphthong (oy, oo, ow, ou, and so
on), but this was a bit of a misnomer, because the word 'diphthong'
(pronounced, by most teachers, as 'dipthong') was used indiscriminately
for both digraphs and diphthongs.
Getting back to the original question, I've certainly heard many
Americans use (what I hear as) the /beINk/ pronunciation for 'bank',
but I can't pin down the region. The OP is from New York, as I
recall it, and I think of that pronunciation as being from further
south.
--
Peter Moylan Peter....@newcastle.edu.au
http://eepjm.newcastle.edu.au (OS/2 and eCS information and software)
Meg Anne
No, the vowel sound that I hear in Anne is completely different than
the one I hear in language. To me, they're as different as night and
day. I hear the short A sound in "Anne" and the long A sound in
"language." The two are not even close. Obviously, I'm in the
minority here, but I just can't help but stick to my case. I totally
hear the long A in language, etc. Call me crazy.
Tony Cooper
wrote:
>
>People talk funny in Chicago. :-) Indianapolis folks pronounce words
>correctly.
>
Only Northsiders in Indianapolis. Specifically people from Broad
Ripple.
Meg Anne
I like your thoughts on this, and I truly appreciate your thoughtul
analysis of the sounds in question. I am particularly open to the
idea of the "half long" sound.
In stenography, however, we often have to make a decision - the sound
is either long or short. and we write it accordingly on our machine.
I guess that's why I've been trying to make this "black and white" all
along. I guess this is just one of those gray areas.
Thanks again.
Meg Anne
John Lawler
There's a vowel change going on in the United States right now called "The
Northern Cities Chain Shift" that may account for your experience, Meg.
One of the shifts in the chain is that the /æ/ 'short A' sound is moving up
to a diphthong /eæ/, sort of like 'AY-uh' or 'EE-uh', so that the woman's
name "Ann" is pronounced like "Ayun", or even like the man's name "Ian".
That might be what you're hearing. It's still the same phoneme, just
different allophones.
You can learn more about it at
http://www.ic.arizona.edu/~lsp/Northeast/ncshift/ncshift.html
Meg Anne
>
> > I have no regional accent that I'm aware of - I talk just
> > like they do on television and in the movies (that's the best
> > comparison I can think of since to me that just represents mainstream
> > America...) My mom, who's from the same geographical area, disagrees
> > with me on the vowel sound within the words in question, so I can't
> > believe it's a regional thing that's causing me this dispute.
>
> It's not quite as simple as that. There isn't one, uniform
> general American accent. There's plenty of room for variation, even if
> you don't have a specifically regional accent.
Thanks for your feedback. I guess what I'm trying to say is that I
speak like national personalities such as Tom Browkaw, Katie Couric,
Jane Pauley and Diane Sawyer. Whatever their dialect is, mine is very
much the same. Is their a name for their accents? (i.e., a standard
broacasting/network dialect of some kind?) Anyhow, to me, they all
sound very much alike. I personally think of this as just plain
American - no accent. They're not southern, they're not New England,
they're not New York, Boston, Midwesternm Texan or Canadian. If you
heard me speak, there's no way you could tell that I'm originally from
the Adirondacks of upstate New York. I could just as easily be from
Denver, San Diego, D.C., Phoenix or Seattle. (Okay, so maybe those
aren't good examples, since they're basically melting pot cities...)
>
> > Despite all the feedback I've gotten to the contrary, I still firmly
> > believe that it's the long a sound. I've tried hard to be convinced
> > otherwise, but I just can't be swayed on this.
>
> I think you're approaching this the wrong way. You say it one
> way; I and many others you've consulted say it another way. It's not
> an issue of "belief" or "convincing" or "swaying."
I don't think it's a matter of how people are "saying" it, it's how we
all are "hearing" these words when they are spoken and our
interpretation of short and long vowel sounds.
For me it really IS an issue of believing and/or being
convinced/swayed. I say that because I am a court reporting
(stenography) student. I'm being trained to write words according to
sound, not necesarily how they are written. If I am going to hear a
sound and properly interpet it so that I can write it correctly on my
machine, then it's absolutely crucial that I believe what I'm writing
and don't disagree with it. Otherwise, it will come up wrong in a
realtime translation scenario, and the steno won't translate. Readers
then won't be able to understand what they're seeing. Imagine seeing
that in a closed-captioning situation?
>
> > My latest example - the word "language." It's so obviously a long a
> > sound to me. Yet the dictionaries and the rest of the world seem to
> > disagree with me. LAIN GWJ (I don't know the proper phonetic
> > symbols...)
>
> I'd write what you're trying to illustrate as [leINwIdZ]
>
> > is how I hear it (no matter who is speaking it), not LAN
> > GWJ.
>
> [l&NwIdZ]
Thanks. I guess I need to learn the phonetic alphabet.
R J Valentine
} On Fri, 06 Feb 2004 22:20:39 GMT, jla...@rygar.gpcc.itd.umich.edu
} (John Lawler) wrote:
}
} <Fascinating and educational, to me anyway, description of the Great
} Vowel Shift>
}
} The degree of erudition sometimes displayed in this newsgroup is
} something to behold. I'd give this post, if I could, the Most
} Interesting Post of the Winter award.
Yeah, well, except that it looks like he didn't understand the question
and answered instead a question the OP already knew the answer to. She
asked about a carefully restricted subset of "short a" that Prof. Fontanna
has posted on at length, and Bob Cunningham has also said some useful
things about. She already knew about the "short a" in "back" and the
"long a" in "bake", but was asking instead about the often different
"short a" (for which there needn't be a phonemic difference, though there
is a marked phonetic difference) in "bank". I think Prof. Fontana calls
them the "lax a" and the "tense a", but I forget which is which.
But it was fascinating and educational, I'll agree with you on that.
And hella erudite.
--
R. J. Valentine <mailto:r...@smart.net>
R J Valentine
...
} ps. I consulted Merriam Webster's online edition of their unabridged
} dictionary, and while they do classify a short A sound for my original
} words in question, they also give a secondary pronunciation,"AI," in
} their pronuncation guide for some of those words. This is the only
} dictionary I can find that even slightly supports my case. I would
} LOVE to find another source that supports it even more...
Google for just about any posting by a mystery fellow posting from either
an nyu.edu or a weslyan.edu address with either "RF" or "fontana" in there
somewhere and using the words "lax" and "tense" There's plenty of support
for your observation there. Bob Cunningham also supports it (I think),
but I'm not sure how you'd google his up.
Charles Riggs
wrote:
>Google for just about any posting by a mystery fellow posting from either
>an nyu.edu or a weslyan.edu address with either "RF" or "fontana" in there
>somewhere and using the words "lax" and "tense" There's plenty of support
>for your observation there. Bob Cunningham also supports it (I think),
>but I'm not sure how you'd google his up.
Perhaps because it's up his google?
Jonathan Jordan
news:c0hg1p$fmi$3...@seagoon.newcastle.edu.au...
> John Lawler infrared:
>
> [snipping most of an excellent explanation]
>
> > Americans are taught that there are two kinds of 'A' -- long and
short.
>
> And, to the best of my knowledge, non-Americans are not taught this
> terminology, which can lead to confusion in an international
newsgroup.
> To me, an Australian, 'short a' is the sound in /k&n/ (is able), and
> 'long a' is the sound in /k&:n/ (a metal container).
And to me, in the north of England, "short a" is the vowel I use in
"bath", "ask", "chance" (which is the same as the one in "cat"), and
"long a" is the vowel that people from the south-east of England use
in "bath" etc. (which is different from the one that they use in
"cat").
However, I'm familiar with the American terminology as well.
Jonathan
John Holmes
>
> Phonemically, it doesn't matter, as there are, to the best of my
> knowledge, no words that are distinguished by having /&/ (the "short"
> A) or /eI/ (the "long" A) before /N/ (the "ng" sound, which also
> appears in most words with "nk").
What about 'bang' and 'baying'?
--
Regards
John
Apurbva Chandra Senray
> Thanks for your feedback. I guess what I'm trying to say is that I
> speak like national personalities such as Tom Browkaw, Katie Couric,
> Jane Pauley and Diane Sawyer.
This might come as a surprise to you, but all these people don't
necessarily have exactly the same accent.
> Whatever their dialect is, mine is very much the same.
Dialect and accent are not necessarily the same thing. They
probably do speak in the same dialect when giving news reports. There
is, I think, a Standard American dialect. However, there probabaly
isn't a Standard American accent.
> Is their a name for their accents?
Hello, Fontana?
> (i.e., a standard broacasting/network dialect of some kind?) Anyhow, to me,
> they all sound very much alike. I personally think of this as just plain
> American - no accent. They're not southern, they're not New England,
> they're not New York, Boston, Midwesternm Texan or Canadian. If you
> heard me speak, there's no way you could tell that I'm originally from
> the Adirondacks of upstate New York. I could just as easily be from
> Denver, San Diego, D.C., Phoenix or Seattle. (Okay, so maybe those
> aren't good examples, since they're basically melting pot cities...)
Stick around and you'll see some suprising things.
> For me it really IS an issue of believing and/or being
> convinced/swayed. I say that because I am a court reporting
> (stenography) student. I'm being trained to write words according to
> sound, not necesarily how they are written. If I am going to hear a
> sound and properly interpet it so that I can write it correctly on my
> machine, then it's absolutely crucial that I believe what I'm writing
> and don't disagree with it. Otherwise, it will come up wrong in a
> realtime translation scenario, and the steno won't translate. Readers
> then won't be able to understand what they're seeing. Imagine seeing
> that in a closed-captioning situation?
Is there a standard transcription for these words or not? If
there is, then you've got to use it. But there's no reason you have to
believe or agree with the phonetic interpretation. I still think
you're making this harder than it is.
Evan Kirshenbaum
> "Evan Kirshenbaum" <kirsh...@hpl.hp.com> wrote in message
> news:1xp3nb...@hpl.hp.com...
>> Phonemically, it doesn't matter, as there are, to the best of my
>> knowledge, no words that are distinguished by having /&/ (the
>> "short" A) or /eI/ (the "long" A) before /N/ (the "ng" sound, which
>> also appears in most words with "nk"). Since there is therefore no
>> potential ambiguity, individual speakers are free, when they
>> construct their internal lexicon, to decide for themselves which
>> phoneme to use, and different speakers doubtless make different
>> choices. I would be unsurprised to read responses from people who
>> use both as well as from those who consider it to be /E/ (the
>> "short E" of "bet").
>
> How would you expect people who consider it to be /E/ to treat
> "length" and "strength"? I have /E/ in those, but /a/ (equivalent
> to your /&/) in the words listed by Meg Anne.
I'd suspect that they'd probably consider that /E/ as well. I seem to
have what I'd call /E/ and what I'd call /eI/ in free variation in
"strength" and "length". (Part of it is just that the /T/ at the end
takes up time, which is taken out of the vowel, so the vowel is
shorter.)
>> For myself, I consider it to be /eI/ (long A), and I'm pretty sure
>> that that's the way it was presented when I was in elementary
>> school in Chicago in the early '70s. Merriam-Webster's Collegiate
>> Dictionary, on the other hand, calls it /&/ (short A).
>
> Other Americans have said that they consider it to be /eI/. As a BrE
> speaker, though, that seems a very unnatural analysis to me.
>
> What about "sing" etc.? /I/ or /i/?
I'd call it /I/, and I'm pretty sure that that's the way it was
taught, but again there are no minimal pairs that come to mind. /iN/
suggests a Spanish accent.
--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
HP Laboratories |I like giving talks to industry,
1501 Page Mill Road, 1U, MS 1141 |because one of the things that I've
Palo Alto, CA 94304 |found is that you really can't
|learn anything at the Harvard
kirsh...@hpl.hp.com |Business School.
(650)857-7572 | Clayton Christensen
| Harvard Business School
http://www.kirshenbaum.net/
Jerry Friedman
> "Skitt" <ski...@comcast.net> wrote in message news:<c0gius$174ag0$1...@ID-61580.news.uni-berlin.de>...
> > Isn't your vowel in "Anne" the same as that in "language"? Mine is.
>
>
> No, the vowel sound that I hear in Anne is completely different than
> the one I hear in language. To me, they're as different as night and
> day. I hear the short A sound in "Anne" and the long A sound in
> "language." The two are not even close. Obviously, I'm in the
> minority here, but I just can't help but stick to my case. I totally
> hear the long A in language, etc. Call me crazy.
Same with me, Meg Anne (though I'll call you crazy if you insist).
I'm from suburban Cleveland.
There's a lot to be said here about phonemes, and you might want to
look into it to understand how you can hear other people as saying the
"take" vowel when they hear themselves as saying the "tack" vowel.
Unfortunately, the AUE audio archives
<http://alt-usage-english.org/audio_archive.shtml> don't seem to
contain any examples of /&N/. Since the subject comes up now and
then, maybe someone with a mike would like to record "Thanks, but a
ban on saying such things would be the bane of language." Don't
forget to read <http://alt-usage-english.org/recording_suggestions.html>
before making the recording.
--
Jerry Friedman
Meg Anne
>
> > Thanks for your feedback. I guess what I'm trying to say is that I
> > speak like national personalities such as Tom Browkaw, Katie Couric,
> > Jane Pauley and Diane Sawyer.
>
> This might come as a surprise to you, but all these people don't
> necessarily have exactly the same accent.
It does come as a surprise to me, but I do not profess to be an expert
on this subject. And I think that any "average" American listener
would agree with me that they do sound very much alike. By "average"
I mean simply one who has just a normal understanding of language and
sounds, not an expert.
Yes, there is a standard stenographic outline for the sounds in these
words, and yes, I really should use them. Most of these words have the
short A "stroke" in them (which feels unnatural to me, because I hear
the long A). Oddly enough, though, I just learned the word "anger"
can be stroked with the short A sound, while the words angry and
angrily cannot - they require the long A. So see, it's not like an
exact science. I am starting to see that a lot will have to be
memorized and not just sounded out. I'm really not trying to make
this harder than it is; I'm just trying to make sense out of it all
and get a clear picture of sounds so that I can properly stroke new
words when I hear them for the first time... My goal is to be an
exceptional student and an exceptional court reporter one day. That
was the reason behind my original post - to gain some insight and
share it with my classmates. I'm learning so much each day - I only
started the schooling for this profession three months ago, so I have
a long way to go.
Thanks again for your input.
Meg Anne
Evan Kirshenbaum
> And now we get to your question. In American English, the vowel sound
> that appears in
>
> bank, blanket, bang, tank, tango, rank, blank, thanks
>
> is the low front vowel that corresponds to 'Short A';
Except for those of us for whom it isn't. I can pronounce all of
those words with /&/, and they are perceptibly (to me) different.
Phonemically for me, it's definitely perceived as /eI/. Phonetically,
I suspect that it's a monophthonic [e], although there might be
something of the glide there. If I pronounce the words differently
from others, it's never been mentioned, so apparently people simply
tend to hear whatever phoneme they expect in that position.
I'm trying to picture one of those _Electric Company_ bits where you
have two faces at the sides of the screen each pronouncing part of the
word and then both pronouncing the whole word to illustrate how
various letter combinations are read. For "ba, nk, bank", I'm really
having trouble imagining the first person reading "ba" as /b&/ rather
than /beI/.
--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
HP Laboratories |Bullwinkle: You sure that's the
1501 Page Mill Road, 1U, MS 1141 | only way?
Palo Alto, CA 94304 |Rocky: Well, if you're going to be
| a hero, you've got to do
kirsh...@hpl.hp.com | stupid things every once in
(650)857-7572 | a while.
Evan Kirshenbaum
> Meg Anne wrote:
>> My latest example - the word "language." It's so obviously a long a
>> sound to me. Yet the dictionaries and the rest of the world seem to
>> disagree with me. LAIN GWJ (I don't know the proper phonetic
>> symbols...) is how I hear it (no matter who is speaking it), not LAN
>> GWJ. Oh well, I guess this is just one of those things that I'll go
>> the rest of my life disagreeing with everyone on. Thanks again.
>> Meg Anne
>
> Isn't your vowel in "Anne" the same as that in "language"? Mine is.
I don't believe that mine is. I've put up a WAV file of myself saying
Anne
language
l/&/nguage
bank
b/&/nk
sang
s/&/ng
at
http://www.kirshenbaum.net/AUE/ang.wav
The ones with the substituted /&/ certainly feel different when I
pronounce them.
--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
HP Laboratories |Those who study history are doomed
1501 Page Mill Road, 1U, MS 1141 |to watch others repeat it.
Palo Alto, CA 94304
kirsh...@hpl.hp.com
(650)857-7572
Pat Durkin
> "Skitt" <ski...@comcast.net> writes:
>
> > Meg Anne wrote:
> >> My latest example - the word "language." It's so obviously a long a
> >> sound to me. Yet the dictionaries and the rest of the world seem to
> >> disagree with me. LAIN GWJ (I don't know the proper phonetic
> >> symbols...) is how I hear it (no matter who is speaking it), not LAN
> >> GWJ. Oh well, I guess this is just one of those things that I'll go
> >> the rest of my life disagreeing with everyone on. Thanks again.
> >> Meg Anne
> >
> > Isn't your vowel in "Anne" the same as that in "language"? Mine is.
>
> I don't believe that mine is. I've put up a WAV file of myself saying
>
> Anne
> language
> l/&/nguage
> bank
> b/&/nk
> sang
> s/&/ng
>
> at
>
> http://www.kirshenbaum.net/AUE/ang.wav
I don't really hear much difference (if any) between language and
l/&/nguage.
I do say Ann, and then revert to "&eny" (your symbol). I would spell it
"enny", of course.
Going into the "long a" sound, may I comment: my mother's nickname, Ag, was
first pronounced by my cousins as "aig", a combination of "egg" and "ag",
and was much laughed at by us, until we realized he had grown from calling
our mom "Mom".
OT: I looked at your surname list and see "Katzenellenbogen" and wonder if
there is a story there. That was the beginning of a verse in an old
nonsense song :"Katzenellenbogen-by- the-sea", or very like. I think we
pronounced ti Katzenallenbogen.
Oh, yes. Gilly, Gilly Hasenpfeffer Katz- etc.
I don't know that it was an old "folk" song, since I recall learning it from
the radio, probably in the '50s.
Don Aitken
<durk...@nothome.com> wrote:
>OT: I looked at your surname list and see "Katzenellenbogen" and wonder if
>there is a story there. That was the beginning of a verse in an old
>nonsense song :"Katzenellenbogen-by- the-sea", or very like. I think we
>pronounced ti Katzenallenbogen.
>
>Oh, yes. Gilly, Gilly Hasenpfeffer Katz- etc.
>I don't know that it was an old "folk" song, since I recall learning it from
>the radio, probably in the '50s.
>
I remember that, too. But there seem to be rather a lot of people with
Katzenellenbogens in their ancestry, to judge by this:
The Unbroken Chain
by Neil Rosenstein
One of the best-known published Jewish genealogies. It traces the
descendants of Rabbi Meir Katzenelnbogen of Padua through 16
generations to the present. More than 25,000 people are identified as
descendants. "This is truly a compilation of the elite of Ashkenazic
Jewry, and it is no surprise that one finds among their offspring some
of this century's most important Jews in Europe, Israel, and America.
A very high proportion of genealogies are those of the leading
Hassidic dynasties: Levi Isaac of Berdichev, Halberstam, Rabinowitz,
Horowitz, Rokeach, Shapiro, Spira, Teitelbaum, Twersky, etc."--Rabbi
Malcolm H. Stern.
6½" x 9½" 1344 pp. (2 vols) hardcover $79.95
--
Don Aitken
Mail to the addresses given in the headers is no longer being
read. To mail me, substitute "clara.co.uk" for "freeuk.com".
Donna Richoux
> On Sat, 14 Feb 2004 10:12:52 -0600, "Pat Durkin"
> <durk...@nothome.com> wrote:
>
> >OT: I looked at your surname list and see "Katzenellenbogen" and wonder if
> >there is a story there. That was the beginning of a verse in an old
> >nonsense song :"Katzenellenbogen-by- the-sea", or very like. I think we
> >pronounced ti Katzenallenbogen.
> >
> >Oh, yes. Gilly, Gilly Hasenpfeffer Katz- etc.
> >I don't know that it was an old "folk" song, since I recall learning it from
> >the radio, probably in the '50s.
"Gilly gilly ossenfeffer katzenellenbogen by the sea" was recorded by UK
entertainer Max Bygraves (1922- ), though I don't find who claimed
writing credit. Nor do I find any lyrics (I've never heard it).
The nonsense song it suggests to me has a "bogen" in it -- I wonder if
it's related? I learned it as follows, at summer camp, and I'm sure a
lot of other people know endless variants:
Catalina Madelina Rubinsteina Wall
Anna Hogan Bogan Logan was her name.
She had two teeth at the front of her mouth,
One pointed north and the other pointed south... Etc.
> >
> I remember that, too. But there seem to be rather a lot of people with
> Katzenellenbogens in their ancestry, to judge by this:
>
> The Unbroken Chain
> by Neil Rosenstein
> One of the best-known published Jewish genealogies. It traces the
> descendants of Rabbi Meir Katzenelnbogen of Padua through 16
> generations to the present. More than 25,000 people are identified as
> descendants.
[snip remainder]
--
Best -- Donna Richoux
Dr Robin Bignall
>Don Aitken <don-a...@freeuk.com> wrote:
>
>> On Sat, 14 Feb 2004 10:12:52 -0600, "Pat Durkin"
>> <durk...@nothome.com> wrote:
>>
>> >OT: I looked at your surname list and see "Katzenellenbogen" and wonder if
>> >there is a story there. That was the beginning of a verse in an old
>> >nonsense song :"Katzenellenbogen-by- the-sea", or very like. I think we
>> >pronounced ti Katzenallenbogen.
>> >
>> >Oh, yes. Gilly, Gilly Hasenpfeffer Katz- etc.
>> >I don't know that it was an old "folk" song, since I recall learning it from
>> >the radio, probably in the '50s.
>
>"Gilly gilly ossenfeffer katzenellenbogen by the sea" was recorded by UK
>entertainer Max Bygraves (1922- ), though I don't find who claimed
>writing credit. Nor do I find any lyrics (I've never heard it).
>
I can't find the lyrics either, and I think this was recorded in the 1950s,
so memory is strained.
Max B sang it with audience participation in every second line. I can't
remember the exact words, but it went something like:
"There was a man
[Audience: There was a man]
And he had a dream
[...]
Of a tiny house
[..]
By a tiny stream
[..]
And the dream came true
[...]
Eventually,
in Gilly gilly ossenfeffer katzenellenbogen by the sea
ee ee ee ee."
And so on for many verses.
If you google you'll find the song available in Max B compilation albums.
(Apologies to Laura. I hope this didn't trigger anything.)
--
wrmst rgrds
Robin Bignall
Quiet part of Hertfordshire
England
John Dean
> Don Aitken <don-a...@freeuk.com> wrote:
>
>> On Sat, 14 Feb 2004 10:12:52 -0600, "Pat Durkin"
>> <durk...@nothome.com> wrote:
>>
>>> OT: I looked at your surname list and see "Katzenellenbogen" and
>>> wonder if there is a story there. That was the beginning of a
>>> verse in an old nonsense song :"Katzenellenbogen-by- the-sea", or
>>> very like. I think we pronounced ti Katzenallenbogen.
>>>
>>> Oh, yes. Gilly, Gilly Hasenpfeffer Katz- etc.
>>> I don't know that it was an old "folk" song, since I recall
>>> learning it from the radio, probably in the '50s.
>
> "Gilly gilly ossenfeffer katzenellenbogen by the sea" was recorded by
> UK entertainer Max Bygraves (1922- ), though I don't find who claimed
> writing credit. Nor do I find any lyrics (I've never heard it).
I remember the song well. It came up in the Cecil Adams group 4 years ago
and here's part of my post:
<< It was called ‘Gilly Gilly Ossenfeffer Katzenellenbogen By The Sea’ & was
popular in the fifties plus the Beatles recorded it in ’69. Anyway, I always
assumed it was a nonsense song but I was trying to track down a place called
Katzengeschrei ... and damn if there isn’t a real place called
Katzenelnbogen in Germany altho it isn’t by
the sea. >>
eg http://www.schloss-katzenelnbogen.de/
Katzenellenbogen is a popular surname, to judge from the Google hits it
generates.
I can still remember most of the lyrics to the song (Bygraves version). It
begins :
There's a tiny house
by a tiny stream
where a [ something ] man
had a [ something ] dream ...
No doubt 'ossenfeffer' came from 'hasenpfeffer' and 'katzenellenbogen' was a
name known to the songwriter(s) which happened to fit the nonsense pattern
and rhythm. Or maybe there was a genuine German ancestor?
--
John Dean
Oxford
Steve Hayes
>"Gilly gilly ossenfeffer katzenellenbogen by the sea" was recorded by UK
>entertainer Max Bygraves (1922- ), though I don't find who claimed
>writing credit. Nor do I find any lyrics (I've never heard it).
>
>The nonsense song it suggests to me has a "bogen" in it -- I wonder if
>it's related? I learned it as follows, at summer camp, and I'm sure a
>lot of other people know endless variants:
>
> Catalina Madelina Rubinsteina Wall
> Anna Hogan Bogan Logan was her name.
> She had two teeth at the front of her mouth,
> One pointed north and the other pointed south... Etc.
Cape Town Castle is built in the shape of a five-pointed star.
One of the points is called Katzenellenbogen.
--
Steve Hayes from Tshwane, South Africa
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/7734/stevesig.htm
E-mail - see web page, or parse: shayes at dunelm full stop org full stop uk
R H Draney
>
>Max B sang it with audience participation in every second line. I can't
>remember the exact words, but it went something like:
>
>"There was a man
>[Audience: There was a man]
>And he had a dream
>[...]
>Of a tiny house
>[..]
>By a tiny stream
>[..]
>And the dream came true
>[...]
>Eventually,
>in Gilly gilly ossenfeffer katzenellenbogen by the sea
>ee ee ee ee."
>
>And so on for many verses.
>
>If you google you'll find the song available in Max B compilation albums.
>
>(Apologies to Laura. I hope this didn't trigger anything.)
I'm going to risk making it far worse if it did...since we're doing obscure
geographic names in very obscure song lyrics, what can anyone tell me about
"Blau-Wildebeest Fontaine", the title on the B-side of Paul Anka's first
single?...
I'll take anything, be it about the place or about the song....r
Donna Richoux
>
> I'm going to risk making it far worse if it did...since we're doing obscure
> geographic names in very obscure song lyrics, what can anyone tell me about
> "Blau-Wildebeest Fontaine", the title on the B-side of Paul Anka's first
> single?...
>
> I'll take anything, be it about the place or about the song....r
It's not much, but the animal is "blue wildebeest" (English), "blauw
wildebeest" (Dutch), "blaue wildebeest" (German). Blau might be an
Afrikaans spelling.
In Dutch, fountain is "fontein".
--
Best - Donna Richoux
Donna Richoux
> On Sun, 15 Feb 2004 00:49:58 +0100, tr...@euronet.nl (Donna Richoux) wrote:
>
> >"Gilly gilly ossenfeffer katzenellenbogen by the sea" was recorded by UK
> >entertainer Max Bygraves (1922- ), though I don't find who claimed
> >writing credit. Nor do I find any lyrics (I've never heard it).
> >
> >The nonsense song it suggests to me has a "bogen" in it -- I wonder if
> >it's related? I learned it as follows, at summer camp, and I'm sure a
> >lot of other people know endless variants:
> >
> > Catalina Madelina Rubinsteina Wall
> > Anna Hogan Bogan Logan was her name.
> > She had two teeth at the front of her mouth,
> > One pointed north and the other pointed south... Etc.
>
> Cape Town Castle is built in the shape of a five-pointed star.
>
> One of the points is called Katzenellenbogen.
I hadn't thought about meaning, but "elleboog" is modern Dutch for
"elbow" or "sharp bend," and "ellebogen" would be the plural. The "n" in
the middle is trivial, like the pannekoek/pannenkoek debate. Whether
"Katz" would refer to an animal or a person or something else, I don't
know, and I don't have an etymological dictionary. This could also be
German.
I've been to a pretty star-shaped fort on the Dutch-German border:
http://www.bourtange.nl/en/homepage.html
The Dutch built a lot of pointed, polygonal gun-emplacements along city
walls. A BBC show implied the English borrowed the idea from the Dutch
(with correct placement, you can aim at attackers all along your own
walls, instead of allowing them sheltered areas). Can I find out what
these things are called... Bastions, or bastillons, apparently, which
sound very French. Or, more generally, bolwerk, which is more Dutch.
Here's a sketch, of pentagonal and triangular defenses:
http://www.hureninfryslan.nl/ravelijn/ravelijn.htm
I see the principle was used all over the world.
But that doesn't get me any evidence that these were particularly called
"elbows" -- beyond just being a general word for a pointed thing.
Reinhold (Rey) Aman
> Steve Hayes wrote:
[...]
> > Cape Town Castle is built in the shape of a five-pointed star.
> >
> > One of the points is called Katzenellenbogen.
> I hadn't thought about meaning, but "elleboog" is modern Dutch for
> "elbow" or "sharp bend," and "ellebogen" would be the plural. The "n"
> in the middle is trivial, like the pannekoek/pannenkoek debate. Whether
> "Katz" would refer to an animal or a person or something else, I don't
> know, and I don't have an etymological dictionary. This could also be
> German.
_Ellenbogen_ and _Ellbogen_ are standard German for "elbow."
_Katzenellenbogen_ literally means "cat's elbow." _Katzen_ is singular
here, a feminine genitive, similar to _Frauen_ in _Frauenkirche_, "our
Lady's church."
--
Reinhold (Rey) Aman
http://www.sonic.net/maledicta/
John Holmes
>
> And, to the best of my knowledge, non-Americans are not taught this
> terminology, which can lead to confusion in an international
> newsgroup.
> To me, an Australian, 'short a' is the sound in /k&n/ (is able), and
> 'long a' is the sound in /k&:n/ (a metal container).
>
> primary school. We were taught that an 'e' at the end of a word
> changed the sound ('mat' vs 'mate'), and that some letters had a
> variety of different pronunciations ('moth', 'mother', 'most'), but
> none of these phenomena had any labels attached. One labelled class
> we did get taught about was the diphthong (oy, oo, ow, ou, and so
> on), but this was a bit of a misnomer, because the word 'diphthong'
> (pronounced, by most teachers, as 'dipthong') was used
> indiscriminately for both digraphs and diphthongs.
Do you remember what you were taught to call the letters of the alphabet
in Bubs? And how when you got to grade one, you were taught their real
names?
The first alphabet had the short vowels and the second had the long
ones, even though they might not have been called that.
--
Regards
John
John Dean
( http://makeashorterlink.com/?Z25011A67 )
<< ANKA: It's a city in Africa, Blau Wilde De Veest Fontaine. And it was the
premise in which this story took place, and I wrote a song about it thing --
Blau Wilde De Veest Fontaine, where love is so splendid. >>
Though Google shows many different versions of the track title. And the
above link is to a transcript so I have no idea how accurate the spelling
may be. I can't find such a town on the web.
--
John Dean
Oxford
Frances Kemmish
> And, to the best of my knowledge, non-Americans are not taught this
> terminology, which can lead to confusion in an international newsgroup.
> To me, an Australian, 'short a' is the sound in /k&n/ (is able), and
> 'long a' is the sound in /k&:n/ (a metal container).
>
This had me puzzled for a while: I pronounce both versions of 'can' the
same.
Eventually, I worked out that you must mean the way 'can' (am able) is
pronounced in "I c'n do this", rather than "I can".
But to say the words are pronounced differently is like saying that the
words 'not' and 'knot' are pronounced differently, because sometimes
'not' becomes 'n't'.
--
Frances Kemmish
Production Manager
East Coast Youth Ballet
www.byramartscenter.com
Donna Richoux
> Peter Moylan wrote:
>
>
> > And, to the best of my knowledge, non-Americans are not taught this
> > terminology, which can lead to confusion in an international newsgroup.
> > To me, an Australian, 'short a' is the sound in /k&n/ (is able), and
> > 'long a' is the sound in /k&:n/ (a metal container).
> >
>
> This had me puzzled for a while: I pronounce both versions of 'can' the
> same.
>
> Eventually, I worked out that you must mean the way 'can' (am able) is
> pronounced in "I c'n do this", rather than "I can".
>
> But to say the words are pronounced differently is like saying that the
> words 'not' and 'knot' are pronounced differently, because sometimes
> 'not' becomes 'n't'.
I take it to mean that the Australians pronounce the "can" that means
"able" about like the rest of us, but the "can" meaning "metal
container" more like "ca-an", actually longer in duration. News to me,
but why not?
Sort of like the Dutch "man" and "maan," although there I hear a
different vowel sound as well as duration.
Peter?
Steve Hayes
>Steve Hayes <haye...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>> Cape Town Castle is built in the shape of a five-pointed star.
>>
>> One of the points is called Katzenellenbogen.
>
>I hadn't thought about meaning, but "elleboog" is modern Dutch for
>"elbow" or "sharp bend," and "ellebogen" would be the plural. The "n" in
>the middle is trivial, like the pannekoek/pannenkoek debate. Whether
>"Katz" would refer to an animal or a person or something else, I don't
>know, and I don't have an etymological dictionary. This could also be
>German.
>
>I've been to a pretty star-shaped fort on the Dutch-German border:
>http://www.bourtange.nl/en/homepage.html
>
>The Dutch built a lot of pointed, polygonal gun-emplacements along city
>walls. A BBC show implied the English borrowed the idea from the Dutch
>(with correct placement, you can aim at attackers all along your own
>walls, instead of allowing them sheltered areas). Can I find out what
>these things are called... Bastions, or bastillons, apparently, which
>sound very French. Or, more generally, bolwerk, which is more Dutch.
>Here's a sketch, of pentagonal and triangular defenses:
> http://www.hureninfryslan.nl/ravelijn/ravelijn.htm
>
>I see the principle was used all over the world.
>
>But that doesn't get me any evidence that these were particularly called
>"elbows" -- beyond just being a general word for a pointed thing.
I don't think it has much to do with the shape - I think it's a family name,
or the name of a noble house, ot something. One of the others is called
Nassau, as in Hesse-.
Ah, just found a history book with a reproduction of the original plans:
NAMEN DER BASTIONS
1. Catzenelleboge
2. Nassau
3. Leerdam
4. Orangie
5. Buuren
But the modern spelling is definitely Katzenellenbogen.
Donna Richoux
> On Sun, 15 Feb 2004 11:40:46 +0100, tr...@euronet.nl (Donna Richoux) wrote:
>
> >Steve Hayes <haye...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> >> Cape Town Castle is built in the shape of a five-pointed star.
> >>
> >> One of the points is called Katzenellenbogen.
[snip DR discussion]
> I don't think it has much to do with the shape - I think it's a family name,
> or the name of a noble house, ot something. One of the others is called
> Nassau, as in Hesse-.
>
> Ah, just found a history book with a reproduction of the original plans:
>
> NAMEN DER BASTIONS
Good, so they are "bastions." I didn't know they'd be named, like rooms.
>
> 1. Catzenelleboge
> 2. Nassau
> 3. Leerdam
> 4. Orangie
> 5. Buuren
>
> But the modern spelling is definitely Katzenellenbogen.
Yes, leaving it that way and adding a final N turns it up as, for
example, one of the Prince of Orange's many titles in 1675:
grave van Catzenellebogen, Vianden, Lingen, Dietz, Meurs, Buren,
Leerdam &c.,
Plus ten more lines of titles, to be seen at:
http://www.geocities.com/tokyo/garden/5213/dtch1675.htm
"Grave" or "graaf" being earl or count.
Is anybody wondering whether cats have elbows?
John O'Flaherty
wrote:
If mine doesn't, she's broken something.
--
john
Ben Zimmer
I'm not sure about the Australian pronunciation, but it sounds somewhat
similar to the "short-a split" in New York and Philadelphia. In those
cities, the "can" of "tin can" is tense (raised, fronted, lengthened,
sometimes diphthongized), while the "can" of "I can" is not. (This has
nothing to do with the stress pattern Frances mentioned-- in both cases
we're talking about how "can" is pronounced in a stressed position.)
More on the Mid-Atlantic short-a split here:
http://groups.google.com/groups?threadm=3C53E1EC...@midway.uchicago.edu
http://www.ling.upenn.edu/phono_atlas/Atlas_chapters/Ch11/Ch11.html
Steve Hayes
wrote:
><< ANKA: It's a city in Africa, Blau Wilde De Veest Fontaine. And it was the
>premise in which this story took place, and I wrote a song about it thing --
>Blau Wilde De Veest Fontaine, where love is so splendid. >>
>
>Though Google shows many different versions of the track title. And the
>above link is to a transcript so I have no idea how accurate the spelling
>may be. I can't find such a town on the web.
It's a fictional town that features in John Buchan's "Prester John".
Blaauwwildebeestfontein.
Which, being interpreted for the benefit of foreigners, means "Blue Gnu
Spring".
Though there isn't such a town, it has the ring of possibility, because there
are numerous Elandsfonteins, Olifantsfonteins, Hartebeestspruits,
Luipaardsvleis etc.
Joe Fineman
Mightn't she have knees instead?
--
--- Joe Fineman j...@TheWorld.com
||: It is tasteless to recommend one's own taste, but scarcely :||
||: honest to recommend any other. :||
John O'Flaherty
>John O'Flaherty <quia...@yahoo.com> writes:
>
>> On Sun, 15 Feb 2004 18:46:07 +0100, tr...@euronet.nl (Donna Richoux)
>> wrote:
>
>> >Is anybody wondering whether cats have elbows?
>>
>> If mine doesn't, she's broken something.
>
>Mightn't she have knees instead?
She does, toward the rear. The ones toward the front bend the other
way, so they seem like elbows.
--
john
Peter Moylan
>Do you remember what you were taught to call the letters of the alphabet
>in Bubs? And how when you got to grade one, you were taught their real
>names?
>
>The first alphabet had the short vowels and the second had the long
>ones, even though they might not have been called that.
I don't think we had that system at our school. I can remember
reciting "A is for apple, A says /&/; B is for bird, B says /b/"
and so on. That is, we were introduced to the letter names and
their sounds at the same time.
But then I was never officially in grade one. The school, a poor
convent school, had grade Bubs and grade one in the same room.
(80 children, one teacher!) I spent the year following what the
grade one kids were doing, so by the end of the year they
decided I might as well jump straight to grade 2. That means that
I can't say with precision what grade I was in.
By the way, I don't have happy memories of that school. One of
the best things that ever happened to me was when I left the nuns
behind and went to the (state-run) high school.
--
Peter Moylan Peter....@newcastle.edu.au
http://eepjm.newcastle.edu.au (OS/2 and eCS information and software)
Peter Moylan
>Frances Kemmish <fkem...@optonline.net> wrote:
>
>> Peter Moylan wrote:
>>
>> > And, to the best of my knowledge, non-Americans are not taught this
>> > terminology, which can lead to confusion in an international newsgroup.
>> > To me, an Australian, 'short a' is the sound in /k&n/ (is able), and
>> > 'long a' is the sound in /k&:n/ (a metal container).
>>
>> This had me puzzled for a while: I pronounce both versions of 'can' the
>> same.
>>
>> Eventually, I worked out that you must mean the way 'can' (am able) is
>> pronounced in "I c'n do this", rather than "I can".
That can also happen, but it's not what I meant. The c'n version is
a definite vowel change that turns an /&/ into a schwa. I'm
thinking of something much more subtle, where the same vowel is used
but it's held for different lengths of time. I don't think there's
any dialect of AmE where a length distinction is made - and,
anyway, American vowels almost always sound long to me - but it's
common enough in Australian English.
>I take it to mean that the Australians pronounce the "can" that means
>"able" about like the rest of us, but the "can" meaning "metal
>container" more like "ca-an", actually longer in duration. News to me,
>but why not?
Yes, that's what I meant.
>Sort of like the Dutch "man" and "maan," although there I hear a
>different vowel sound as well as duration.
Agreed. What I hear in Dutch is /man/ and /mA:n/. Slightly
different vowel, major difference in duration. You can hear the
same thing, more or less, in French "patte" and "pâte".
Aaron J. Dinkin
> "Skitt" <ski...@comcast.net> writes:
>
>> Isn't your vowel in "Anne" the same as that in "language"? Mine is.
>
> I don't believe that mine is.
In your .wav file, I think the vowel in "Anne" sounds different from that
in "language", but more similar to it than to [&]. I hear "Anne" [e@n]
and "language" [leN] (etc.), which are exactly as I think I say them.
I'd categorize my vowel in "language" as /&/, on the grounds that
everywhere else in my vowel system, only the so-called short vowels can
appear before /N/; it would be odd to have /&/ and /e/ as an exception,
especially inasmuch as I use a flavor of [e] for /&/ before other nasals
anyway.
John Dean
> On Sun, 15 Feb 2004 12:31:56 -0000, "John Dean"
> <john...@frag.lineone.net> wrote:
>
>> << ANKA: It's a city in Africa, Blau Wilde De Veest Fontaine. And it
>> was the premise in which this story took place, and I wrote a song
>> about it thing -- Blau Wilde De Veest Fontaine, where love is so
>> splendid. >>
>>
>> Though Google shows many different versions of the track title. And
>> the above link is to a transcript so I have no idea how accurate the
>> spelling may be. I can't find such a town on the web.
>
> It's a fictional town that features in John Buchan's "Prester John".
>
> Blaauwwildebeestfontein.
>
> Which, being interpreted for the benefit of foreigners, means "Blue
> Gnu Spring".
>
--
John 'Is Blaauwildebeest like Weit Rhino?' Dean
Oxford
Evan Kirshenbaum
> Evan Kirshenbaum wrote:
>>
>> Phonemically, it doesn't matter, as there are, to the best of my
>> knowledge, no words that are distinguished by having /&/ (the "short"
>> A) or /eI/ (the "long" A) before /N/ (the "ng" sound, which also
>> appears in most words with "nk").
>
> What about 'bang' and 'baying'?
For me, "baying" is strictly a two-syllable word /'beI(j)IN/.
--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
HP Laboratories |Sometimes I think the surest sign
1501 Page Mill Road, 1U, MS 1141 |that intelligent life exists
Palo Alto, CA 94304 |elsewhere in the universe is that
|none of it has tried to contact us.
kirsh...@hpl.hp.com | Calvin
(650)857-7572
Jerry Friedman
> Cece wrote:
...
> > In American English phonics classes (where children are taught to
> > sound written words out), the beginning assumption is that every vowel
> > has two pronunciations. What that actually means is that two
> > different pronunciations are represented by each symbol. English has
> > 44 phonemes, more or less, and only 26 letters; some of the phonemes
> > are represented by digraphs and some are represented by the same
> > letter.
> >
> > "Long" and "short" have nothing to do with how long the vowel is held.
>
> You see, that's the part that doesn't make sense to Latvian. It's a meaning
> of those words that has been subverted by linguists. The primary meaning is
> otherwise usually referring to length or duration.
Not by linguists--by elementary-school teachers. See Prof. Lawler's
comments in this thread.
> > "A long vowel says its name," and the short vowel is the other
> > pronunciation. Of course, the symbols represent at least three
> > phonemes each, and we have special names for those.
> >
> > i is either long: aI or ai, or short: I. Or, sometimes, usually in
> > words recently stolen from French, i (which we don't have a special
> > term for.
> >
> > e is either long: i, or short: E. Or, sometimes, in words recently
> > stolen from French and usually retaining the acute accent mark, e
> > ("like a long a").
> >
> > a is long: eI or ej, or short: ash. Or, often, "broad": A (there are,
> > in fact, two versions of this sound, very close to each other), the
> > same as the "short o."
They're not necessarily all that close to each other--say for New
Yorkers. And for people from eastern New England (and England), the
"short o" is a different sound from the "broad a".
> > u is long: ju, or short: V. Or, sometimes, "half-long": u.
...
And then there's the sound in "put" and "book". I don't remember a
name for that. Otherwise this is about the way I heard it, except I
don't remember the name "half-long u" for /u/.
--
Jerry Friedman
John Varela
> I've been to a pretty star-shaped fort on the Dutch-German border:
> http://www.bourtange.nl/en/homepage.html
>
> The Dutch built a lot of pointed, polygonal gun-emplacements along city
> walls. A BBC show implied the English borrowed the idea from the Dutch
> (with correct placement, you can aim at attackers all along your own
> walls, instead of allowing them sheltered areas). Can I find out what
> these things are called... Bastions, or bastillons, apparently, which
> sound very French. Or, more generally, bolwerk, which is more Dutch.
> Here's a sketch, of pentagonal and triangular defenses:
> http://www.hureninfryslan.nl/ravelijn/ravelijn.htm
>
> I see the principle was used all over the world.
Credit for the star fort belongs to Sébastien le Prestre de Vauban
(1633-1707).
http://www.theotherside.co.uk/tm-heritage/background/vauban.htm
http://www.geocities.com/Pentagon/6750/
--
John Varela
(Trade "OLD" lamps for "NEW" for email.)
I apologize for munging the address but the spam is too much.
Jonathan Jordan
news:c0pgkf$e7s$4...@seagoon.newcastle.edu.au...
> Donna Richoux infrared:
<snip>
> >I take it to mean that the Australians pronounce the "can" that means
> >"able" about like the rest of us, but the "can" meaning "metal
> >container" more like "ca-an", actually longer in duration. News to me,
> >but why not?
>
> Yes, that's what I meant.
Which words, other than tin "can", does this happen in? Is it largely
determined by the following consonant, like the American "short a split"
mentioned by Ben Zimmer?
Jonathan
Jonathan Jordan
news:c0pjsj$56nu$1...@netnews.upenn.edu...
> On Thu, 12 Feb 2004 11:52:24 -0800, Evan Kirshenbaum
<kirsh...@hpl.hp.com> wrote:
>
> > "Skitt" <ski...@comcast.net> writes:
> >
> >> Isn't your vowel in "Anne" the same as that in "language"? Mine is.
> >
> > I don't believe that mine is.
>
> In your .wav file, I think the vowel in "Anne" sounds different from that
> in "language", but more similar to it than to [&]. I hear "Anne" [e@n]
> and "language" [leN] (etc.), which are exactly as I think I say them.
That's pretty much how I hear them - [e@], similar to my "fail" vowel, in
"Anne", and monophthongal [e], similar to my northern English monophthongal
(more or less) "bake" vowel, in the /N/ words.
How do you hear the ones with "substituted" /&/? They don't sound like the
"Anne" [e@] to me, though there's still something that makes them sound very
"American" to my British ears.
Jonathan
John Lawler
>tr...@euronet.nl (Donna Richoux) writes:
>> I've been to a pretty star-shaped fort on the Dutch-German border:
>> http://www.bourtange.nl/en/homepage.html
>> The Dutch built a lot of pointed, polygonal gun-emplacements along city
>> walls. A BBC show implied the English borrowed the idea from the Dutch
>> (with correct placement, you can aim at attackers all along your own
>> walls, instead of allowing them sheltered areas). Can I find out what
>> these things are called... Bastions, or bastillons, apparently, which
>> sound very French. Or, more generally, bolwerk, which is more Dutch.
>> Here's a sketch, of pentagonal and triangular defenses:
>> http://www.hureninfryslan.nl/ravelijn/ravelijn.htm
>> I see the principle was used all over the world.
>Credit for the star fort belongs to Sébastien le Prestre de Vauban
>(1633-1707).
>http://www.theotherside.co.uk/tm-heritage/background/vauban.htm
>http://www.geocities.com/Pentagon/6750/
Yes, I visited one called "Charles Fort" (I kept thinking of the Forteans)
that guarded the harbor of Kinsale in County Cork. It was across the bay
from "James Fort"; both were named after Stuart kings. Both were
star-shaped and both are in ruins, but Charles Fort was in use until the
Troubles and is now a national historic site. An image is available at
http://www.cork-guide.ie/images/012.jpg
They're called various things, but "Vauban fort" is usually clear enough.
They're the next evolutionary step in defensive architecture after the
medieval castle, forced by the development of effective artillery and massed
small arms. Note that they're protected by banks of earth, which
effectively stop cannon balls, not walls of stone, which they can shatter.
Explosive shells, which weren't developed for several centuries, led to such
dinosaurian extensions of the Vauban fort as the Maginot line.
-John Lawler http://www.umich.edu/~jlawler U Michigan Linguistics Dept
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
But since it falls unto my lot that I should go and you should not,
I'll gently rise and softly call "Good night, and joy be with you all."
- "The Parting Glass" Irish traditional song
Jerry Friedman
> Meg Anne <mileh...@comcast.net> writes:
>
> >Wow. I'm pleased to have received so much follow-up on this topic
> >from people all over. I appreciate everyone's thoughts on this. As a
> >new court reporting student (only half way through theory), I find
> >myself overanalyzing things sometimes. I realize this won't happen
> >when I'm in speed classes, as I won't have time to think about things,
> >I'll just write them.
...
> There's a vowel change going on in the United States right now called "The
> Northern Cities Chain Shift" that may account for your experience, Meg.
>
> One of the shifts in the chain is that the /æ/ 'short A' sound is moving up
> to a diphthong /eæ/, sort of like 'AY-uh' or 'EE-uh', so that the woman's
> name "Ann" is pronounced like "Ayun", or even like the man's name "Ian".
> That might be what you're hearing. It's still the same phoneme, just
> different allophones.
>
> You can learn more about it at
> http://www.ic.arizona.edu/~lsp/Northeast/ncshift/ncshift.html
I suspect that she meant what she said and it's only before /N/. At
least, that's how it is in my speech (from suburban Cleveland): the
vowel of "bang" is quite different from that of "ban", "bad", etc.
This might actually drive me to get a mike. Evan's .wav is good, but
he has a diphthongal "Anne", which might confuse the issue.
--
Jerry Friedman
John Varela
Lawler) wrote:
> >Credit for the star fort belongs to Sébastien le Prestre de Vauban
> >(1633-1707).
>
> >http://www.theotherside.co.uk/tm-heritage/background/vauban.htm
> >http://www.geocities.com/Pentagon/6750/
>
> Yes, I visited one called "Charles Fort" (I kept thinking of the Forteans)
> that guarded the harbor of Kinsale in County Cork. It was across the bay
> from "James Fort"; both were named after Stuart kings. Both were
> star-shaped and both are in ruins, but Charles Fort was in use until the
> Troubles and is now a national historic site. An image is available at
> http://www.cork-guide.ie/images/012.jpg
Closer to home, Fort McHenry is one.
http://www.bcpl.net/~etowner/best.html
iwasaki
"Donna Richoux" <tr...@euronet.nl> wrote in message
news:1g970xj.11t4pvdcgv6t6N%tr...@euronet.nl...
>
> I've been to a pretty star-shaped fort on the Dutch-German border:
> http://www.bourtange.nl/en/homepage.html
>
> The Dutch built a lot of pointed, polygonal gun-emplacements along city
> walls. A BBC show implied the English borrowed the idea from the Dutch
> (with correct placement, you can aim at attackers all along your own
> walls, instead of allowing them sheltered areas). Can I find out what
> these things are called... Bastions, or bastillons, apparently, which
> sound very French. Or, more generally, bolwerk, which is more Dutch.
> Here's a sketch, of pentagonal and triangular defenses:
> http://www.hureninfryslan.nl/ravelijn/ravelijn.htm
>
> I see the principle was used all over the world.
We have such a star-shaped fort in Hakodate, Japan, too. It was
built in 1857 to defend Hokkaido from northern threats, designed
by a Japanese scholar of Dutch studies. Now it's a beautiful
public park:
http://www.japan-guide.com/e/e5352.html
It seems they had the first "International Star-shaped Citadel Cities
Summit" in 1997 in Hakodate, and the participating nations were Canada,
Germany, France, Holland, Finland, Italy, Russia, Vietnam, and Japan.
The fourth will be held in 2006 in Hellevoetsluis, Holland.
--
Nobuko Iwasaki
Peter Moylan
I have long and short vowels in other words, but I can't think of other
good examples where it makes a difference in meaning. I do use
length to distinguish between "no" (short) and "know" (long), but
there the length difference is less, and also less consistent.
I'm not sure whether it depends on the following vowel. I'm
almost certain that the vowel is always short before an aspirated
stop (e.g. "cup" is short, "come" is long), but I'd have to try
a large number of examples before being confident about that.
John Holmes
> "John Holmes" <hol...@smart.net.au> writes:
>
>> Evan Kirshenbaum wrote:
>>>
>>> Phonemically, it doesn't matter, as there are, to the best of my
>>> knowledge, no words that are distinguished by having /&/ (the
>>> "short" A) or /eI/ (the "long" A) before /N/ (the "ng" sound, which
>>> also appears in most words with "nk").
>>
>> What about 'bang' and 'baying'?
>
> For me, "baying" is strictly a two-syllable word /'beI(j)IN/.
The same for me, but I have heard some US pronunciations of 'bang' that
sound almost like two syllables to me.
--
Regards
John
Bystander
"iwasaki" <pianofor...@mtg.biglobe.ne.jp> wrote in message
news:c0rvdk$1a508f$1...@ID-136331.news.uni-berlin.de...
If you do a Google search on the great French military engineer Vauban you
will see that he built scores of great fortresses all over France.
Harvey Van Sickle
> "iwasaki" <pianofor...@mtg.biglobe.ne.jp> wrote in message
> news:c0rvdk$1a508f$1...@ID-136331.news.uni-berlin.de...
>> "Donna Richoux" <tr...@euronet.nl> wrote in message
>> news:1g970xj.11t4pvdcgv6t6N%tr...@euronet.nl...
>>> I've been to a pretty star-shaped fort on the Dutch-German
>>> border: http://www.bourtange.nl/en/homepage.html
>>> I see the principle was used all over the world.
>> We have such a star-shaped fort in Hakodate, Japan, too. It was
>> built in 1857 to defend Hokkaido from northern threats, designed
>> by a Japanese scholar of Dutch studies. Now it's a beautiful
>> public park:
-snip-
> If you do a Google search on the great French military engineer
> Vauban you will see that he built scores of great fortresses all
> over France.
To toss in a "first example" reference: AEJ Morris (_History of Urban
Form_) suggests that the first full "star-shaped" fortress that was
actually built (rather than merely described) was Palma Nova -- begun
1593, and usually ascribed to Scamozzi.
--
Cheers, Harvey
Ottawa/Toronto/Edmonton for 30 years;
Southern England for the past 21 years.
(for e-mail, change harvey to whhvs)
Jerry Friedman
> Donna Richoux wrote:
> > Don Aitken <don-a...@freeuk.com> wrote:
> >
> >> On Sat, 14 Feb 2004 10:12:52 -0600, "Pat Durkin"
> >> <durk...@nothome.com> wrote:
> >>
> >>> OT: I looked at your surname list and see "Katzenellenbogen" and
> >>> wonder if there is a story there. That was the beginning of a
> >>> verse in an old nonsense song :"Katzenellenbogen-by- the-sea", or
> >>> very like. I think we pronounced ti Katzenallenbogen.
...
> Katzenellenbogen is a popular surname, to judge from the Google hits it
> generates.
...
Including two professors (a married couple) in the Chemistry
Department at the U. of Illinois when I was a grad student there in
physics. People called them "K-bogen" /'keI,boUg@n/.
--
Jerry Friedman
Cece
> jla...@rygar.gpcc.itd.umich.edu (John Lawler) writes:
>
> > And now we get to your question. In American English, the vowel sound
> > that appears in
> >
> > bank, blanket, bang, tank, tango, rank, blank, thanks
> >
> > is the low front vowel that corresponds to 'Short A';
>
> Except for those of us for whom it isn't. I can pronounce all of
> those words with /&/, and they are perceptibly (to me) different.
> Phonemically for me, it's definitely perceived as /eI/. Phonetically,
> I suspect that it's a monophthonic [e], although there might be
> something of the glide there. If I pronounce the words differently
> from others, it's never been mentioned, so apparently people simply
> tend to hear whatever phoneme they expect in that position.
>
> I'm trying to picture one of those _Electric Company_ bits where you
> have two faces at the sides of the screen each pronouncing part of the
> word and then both pronouncing the whole word to illustrate how
> various letter combinations are read. For "ba, nk, bank", I'm really
> having trouble imagining the first person reading "ba" as /b&/ rather
> than /beI/.
>
> --
> Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
> HP Laboratories |Bullwinkle: You sure that's the
> 1501 Page Mill Road, 1U, MS 1141 | only way?
> Palo Alto, CA 94304 |Rocky: Well, if you're going to be
> | a hero, you've got to do
> kirsh...@hpl.hp.com | stupid things every once in
> (650)857-7572 | a while.
>
> http://www.kirshenbaum.net/
What vowels do you use in the words "ban" and "bane"? Is either one
actually the vowel you use in "bank"? Or does "bank" use one between
them?
Cece
Cece
> My fellow court reporting students and I are in disagreement over the
> vowel sound that occurs in words such as the following: bank,
> blanket, bang, tank, tango, rank, blank, thanks, etc. One group
> adamantly believes this to be similar to a LONG A sound, while the
> other group thinks it's the SHORT A sound. We have found conflicting
> information on this topic when consulting various dicationaries and
> pronunciation guides. Is it possible that the sound is neither the
> short or long A and might have a phonetic sound/category of its own?
> Personally, I feel it is much closer to a long A than short A, but it
> seems to be kind of an individual thing (you hear it the way you hear
> it, regardless of what others say or what the dicationary says...)
> Any insightful comments on this would be most appreciated. Thank you.
Does this question have to do with stenotypy? I've heard that,
nowadays, the stenotype machine records magnetically, and that this
record is fed to a computer that outputs English. If this is so, I'd
recommend using the vowel sound the computer has been taught to
expect. Otherwise, it'll get hiccups.
Now, when stenotype machines recorded on long strips of paper, and
humans did the transcriptions, accents didn't matter.
My only experience with computerized stenotypy is reading Closed
Captions on TV. Some of those are a true joy to figure out. Even
when it's a film (okay, videotape) being shown, a movie or such, some
of the strangest typos get through.
Cece
Janet
> from people all over. I appreciate everyone's thoughts on this. As a
> new court reporting student (only half way through theory), I find
> myself overanalyzing things sometimes. I realize this won't happen
> when I'm in speed classes, as I won't have time to think about things,
> I'll just write them.
>
> preferable way to go. However, I seem to disagree with the masses
> here, as to the actual sound.... Despite the way these words are
> spelled, I inarguably "hear" the LONG A when these words are spoken
> (by myself or by anyone else, indicative of the fact that it's just
> not my accent, which is just a standard northeastern/way upstate New
> York one...). So much and so clearly that it seems almost
> inconceivable to me that someone could actually hear a "short a"
> sound. For example, I hear the "A" in bank, language, anguish, sang,
> etc.... I truly hear BAY NK, LAY NGUAGE, SAY NG, etc.
>
> I was always taught that when you hear the actual letter, that means
> it is the long sound. On the other hand, I was taught that the true
> short vowel A sound is in words such as cat, hat, land, crack, after,
> etc. To me, the sounds are completely different than the one in bank,
> sang, angst, language, etc. I hear what I'd consider to be closer to
> the long sound in them.
>
> Thanks to all who are responding with your input. I guess this is just
> one thing I'll always disagree with when it comes to our language.
> It's tough to be "wrong" about something I feel so strongly about....
> Oh well, c'est la vie!
>
> Meg (original message poster)
>
>Dear Meg, I think you're getting confused. You say you hear the
vowel 'ay' in 'bank', 'language', etc. and you may well do. But the
vowel 'ay' is not the long form of the vowel 'a'. The long form of
the vowel 'a' is 'ah'. 'ay' is the long form of 'e'. Hope this helps,
Janet
>
>
> Dena Jo <TPUBGTH.delete...@yahoo.com> wrote in message news:<Xns9488CE70...@130.133.1.17>...
> > On 06 Feb 2004, david56 posted thus:
> >
> > > We have a tame court transcriber
> >
> > Who are you calling tame?
> >
> > > who will no doubt be along in a
> > > minute
> >
> > Well, a day, anyway.
> >
> > It's much, much closer to a short A sound than a long A sound. But the
> > real question is, why would you even consider writing it with a long A
> > sound? Imagine seeing PWAEUPBG in your notes instead of PWAPBG.
Raymond S. Wise
news:393658de.04021...@posting.google.com...
We have here a confusion between two different definitions of "long vowels."
I and most other Americans learned the long vowels as "the name of the
vowel," so that the names of the vowels "a," "e," "i," "o," and "u," were
considered to be "long." In ASCII IPA those are represented as [eI], [i],
[aI], [oU], and [ju]: That is, only one of the "long vowels," the "long 'e'"
is a simple vowel. In the system of pronunciation which we were taught,
these were represented by the vowel with a macron over it, while the short
form of each of these was represented by a vowel with a breve over it, and
is expressed in ASCII IPA as [&], [E], [I], [A], and [@] or [V].
So what you identified as the long vowels would bascally hold no meaning for
the average American. Some of us would understand it only because we have
studied linguistics or have learned a foreign language. This is perhaps a
good reason to avoid the terms "long" and "short" in vowels. As it happens,
however, it is helpful to distinguish long from short vowels in the manner I
outlined above in order to get a better grasp of the rules of English
spelling. For example, consider the following:
a, hat, hate
e, met, mete
i, rip, ripe
o, cot, cote
u, cut, cute
In each case, the vowel pronounced in the first word is "short," and that
pronounced in the second word is "long." The rule which this brings out, of
course, is that a "silent 'e'" following a consonant following a vowel in a
monosyllabic word turns a short vowel into a long vowel. There are other
rules, such as "igh" representing the "long 'i'" when the "gh" is silent, as
in "knight," and "high," while "ig" with the "g" pronounced would have the
"short 'i'" sound. There are historic reasons for the relationship between
short vowels and long vowels, using the definition for them which I have
given.
I have mention one more thing. I'm puzzled by your assertion that "'ay' is
the long form of 'e'." It doesn't correspond with any definition of "long
'e'" with which I am familiar. I'm not even sure if by "ay" you mean the
sound of the vowel in "may" ([eI] in ASCII IPA) or that of the vowel in
"try" ([aI] in ASCII IPA. (That in itself is an example of how ASCII IPA can
come in handy.)
> >
> >
> > Dena Jo <TPUBGTH.delete...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:<Xns9488CE70...@130.133.1.17>...
> > > On 06 Feb 2004, david56 posted thus:
> > >
> > > > We have a tame court transcriber
> > >
> > > Who are you calling tame?
> > >
> > > > who will no doubt be along in a
> > > > minute
> > >
> > > Well, a day, anyway.
> > >
> > > It's much, much closer to a short A sound than a long A sound. But
the
> > > real question is, why would you even consider writing it with a long A
> > > sound? Imagine seeing PWAEUPBG in your notes instead of PWAPBG.
--
Raymond S. Wise
Minneapolis, Minnesota USA
E-mail: mplsray @ yahoo . com
Michael West
> We have here a confusion between two different definitions of "long
> vowels." I and most other Americans learned the long vowels as "the
> name of the vowel," so that the names of the vowels "a," "e," "i,"
> "o," and "u," were considered to be "long." In ASCII IPA those are
> represented as [eI], [i], [aI], [oU], and [ju]: That is, only one of
> the "long vowels," the "long 'e'" is a simple vowel. In the system of
> pronunciation which we were taught, these were represented by the
> vowel with a macron over it, while the short form of each of these
> was represented by a vowel with a breve over it, and is expressed in
> ASCII IPA as [&], [E], [I], [A], and [@] or [V].
>
> So what you identified as the long vowels would bascally hold no
> meaning for the average American.
Thank you. I was taught "the name of the vowel" style,
and have had a hell of a time trying to understand what
other people mean when the use "long" to refer to duration
(or whatever it is they refer to).
--
Michael West
Mickwick
[...]
>Both were star-shaped and both are in ruins, but Charles Fort was in
>use until the Troubles and is now a national historic site.
'The Troubles' usually refers to the sectarian conflict in Northern
Ireland after 1968. Charles Fort may well have been in use until 1968
but linking it to the Troubles is a bit like saying that Fort
Ticonderoga was in use until the French Revolution.
(Incidentally, Vauban also invented the socket bayonet.)
--
Mickwick
Jonathan Jordan
news:xNSdnTNJpqY...@gbronline.com...
<snip>
Those phonetic symbols don't apply to all dialects of English, of
course.
> So what you identified as the long vowels would bascally hold no
meaning for
> the average American. Some of us would understand it only because
we have
> studied linguistics or have learned a foreign language. This is
perhaps a
> good reason to avoid the terms "long" and "short" in vowels.
At least in an international forum, where the varying usages could
easily be confusing.
In this case, the original poster didn't (originally) say where she
was from or what she meant by "short a" and "long a". I only decided
that she meant the American usage (and that she was American) because
I'd seen that some Americans did think of the vowel in words like
"bank" as /eI/, and I'd never heard of anybody using the vowel often
called "long a" in Britain (i.e. the "father" vowel, [A:] in RP) in
"bank" etc.
> As it happens,
> however, it is helpful to distinguish long from short vowels in the
manner I
> outlined above in order to get a better grasp of the rules of
English
> spelling. For example, consider the following:
>
> a, hat, hate
>
> e, met, mete
>
> i, rip, ripe
>
> o, cot, cote
>
> u, cut, cute
>
> In each case, the vowel pronounced in the first word is "short," and
that
> pronounced in the second word is "long." The rule which this brings
out, of
> course, is that a "silent 'e'" following a consonant following a
vowel in a
> monosyllabic word turns a short vowel into a long vowel.
A question here: the vowels in words like "tune", "dune", "rude",
"lute", "June" and "nude" look like "long u", in the AmE sense, so far
as the spelling is concerned. But most Americans (and indeed many
British people) have no [j] in some or all of those words - do you
still call them "long u"?
<snip>
> I have mention one more thing. I'm puzzled by your assertion that
"'ay' is
> the long form of 'e'." It doesn't correspond with any definition of
"long
> 'e'" with which I am familiar. I'm not even sure if by "ay" you mean
the
> sound of the vowel in "may" ([eI] in ASCII IPA) or that of the vowel
in
> "try" ([aI] in ASCII IPA. (That in itself is an example of how ASCII
IPA can
> come in handy.)
Maybe she uses [e:] in "may" - many people do. (I tend to use a
monophthong, though I think it doesn't tend to be especially long.) I
wouldn't really have expected that from someone who uses a .au
address, though.
Jonathan
Raymond S. Wise
news:c152rm$1ei01e$1...@ID-162222.news.uni-berlin.de...
This is true, but it complicates matters. For example (here I'm using ASCII
IPA to represent IPA), the Collins dictionaries, Cambridge dictionaries, and
the OED all use [@U] to represent the British (Received Pronunciation)
version of the "long 'o'" (as an American would refer to it). But for the
British version of the "short 'a,'" and the "long 'i,'" the newer
dictionaries from the Oxford University Press (and the newer definitions in
the online OED) use, respectively, [a] and [VI] while the Collins and the
Cambridge use [&] and [aI], the same symbols which I would use to represent
the American pronunciation of the vowels in question.
And let's not even discuss "short 'o'"! (I'm CIC myself--"'caught' is
'cot.'")
[...]
Since I don't remember how that was handled in the system I was taught (I've
been using IPA for thirty years--I once was a linguistics major), I have to
speculate. It may be that I was taught to represent the sound of the vowel
in "boot," [u], as a double-"o," "oo" with an extended macron covering both
letters, and the vowel in "book," [U], as a double-"o," "oo," with an
extended breve covering both letters. We could therefore call the [u] sound
the "long double-'o' sound." (Hey, you have to call it *something*!), with
the [U] sound being the "short double-'o' sound."
The Encarta dictionaries use a double-'o,' with no macron, for the [u]
sound, and a double-'o' with an extended breve for the [U] sound.
Raymond S. Wise
Interesting. I now see that *The American Heritage Dictionary* online uses a
"double-'o'" with an extended macron for the sound [u], and a "double-'o'"
with an extended breve for the sound [U]. Furthermore, it *doesn't* use a
"u" with a macron for the sound [ju]. Instead, it uses a "y" followed by the
"double-'o'" with an extended macron!
See the AHD4's entry for "chute" at
http://www.bartleby.com/61/3/C0350300.html
and its entry for "cute" at
http://www.bartleby.com/61/57/C0825700.html
Janet
Dear Jonathan, I mean 'ay' as in 'may'. I prefer the representation
'eh' for this vowel. I have not learnt linguistics but I have learnt
Pitman Shorthand, and this is the representation of short - long
vowels that is used there:
'a' (pat)................'ah' (father)
'e' (egg)................'eh' (pay)
'i' (sit)................'ee' (see)
'o' (lot)................'au' (awesome)
'u' (mud)................'oh' (oak)
'oo'(foot)...............'oo' (boot)
There are also the diphthongs: 'ahy' (light), 'auy' (boil), 'ow'
(how) and 'yoo' (new). (Note: I am not using linguistic or
scientific spellings for these vowels and diphthongs.)
In English, unlike many other languages, we tend not to use pure
vowels and eg. 'ay' and 'oh' could be thought of as diphthongs, though
in the Pitman system they are represented as vowels.
At school, I too, learned that "'e' on the end makes the 'a' say
'eh'", etc, as in 'hat - hate', etc. but I was taught these as a guide
to spelling, not as short vowel - long vowel pairs.
I was born in England, and came to Australia when I was nearly 14. I
have never been to America, though I am of course familiar with your
accent.
Janet
Michael West
> I was born in England, and came to Australia when I was nearly 14. I
> have never been to America, though I am of course familiar with your
> accent.
Which one?
--
Michael West
Donna Richoux
> Dear Jonathan, I mean 'ay' as in 'may'. I prefer the representation
> 'eh' for this vowel. I have not learnt linguistics but I have learnt
> Pitman Shorthand, and this is the representation of short - long
> vowels that is used there:
>
> 'a' (pat)................'ah' (father)
> 'e' (egg)................'eh' (pay)
> 'i' (sit)................'ee' (see)
> 'o' (lot)................'au' (awesome)
> 'u' (mud)................'oh' (oak)
> 'oo'(foot)...............'oo' (boot)
>
> There are also the diphthongs: 'ahy' (light), 'auy' (boil), 'ow'
> (how) and 'yoo' (new). (Note: I am not using linguistic or
> scientific spellings for these vowels and diphthongs.)
>
> In English, unlike many other languages, we tend not to use pure
> vowels and eg. 'ay' and 'oh' could be thought of as diphthongs, though
> in the Pitman system they are represented as vowels.
>
> At school, I too, learned that "'e' on the end makes the 'a' say
> 'eh'", etc, as in 'hat - hate', etc. but I was taught these as a guide
> to spelling, not as short vowel - long vowel pairs.
>
> I was born in England, and came to Australia when I was nearly 14. I
> have never been to America, though I am of course familiar with your
> accent.
I am glad to see your chart -- we've discussed here before how "short"
and "long" vowels mean different things outside the US than in it, but I
don't ever remember seeing a specific list for England or Australia.
You say you learned this while learning Pitman Shorthand -- this was in
Australia, then, since probably you were over 14?
Does this list match the experience of others outside the US, or is
there just too much nonstandardization of the concept?
I'm thinking that if this does represent any sizeable region, we should
tuck it in our Website somewhere for future reference. Not if it's only
known to a handful of Australian shorthand users, though.
Oh, rather than "egg" as an example for "short e," would "end" do as
well? Because some people tend towards "aig" for "egg" and I'm not sure
what the geographical distribution of that is.
Allowing for that, by the way, your "short" vowels match the standard
American "short" vowels. I found recently that the US list appears in
Noah Webster's 1828 dictionary... Checking the history of Pitman
shorthand, I see that it had a US component from the early days:
Sir Isaac Pitman (1813-1897) of England developed a
system of shorthand and first presented it in 1837,
which was gradually perfected and adapted for 15
languages. The system spread to the United States
through the efforts of Isaac's brother Benn, who
settled in Cincinnati, Ohio.
--
Best -- Donna Richoux
Jonathan Jordan
Note to Janet: I'm not American - I'm from northern England
(Sheffield).
> I am glad to see your chart -- we've discussed here before how
"short"
> and "long" vowels mean different things outside the US than in it,
but I
> don't ever remember seeing a specific list for England or Australia.
>
> You say you learned this while learning Pitman Shorthand -- this was
in
> Australia, then, since probably you were over 14?
>
> Does this list match the experience of others outside the US, or is
> there just too much nonstandardization of the concept?
It makes sense, phonetically, to me. That is, in each pair, the
tongue positions of each vowel are similar, in my accent, and the one
on the right is longer and/or "tenser". But I don't remember ever
being taught vowels in those pairs, and I would think some of those
pairs wouldn't work for all accents.
> I'm thinking that if this does represent any sizeable region, we
should
> tuck it in our Website somewhere for future reference. Not if it's
only
> known to a handful of Australian shorthand users, though.
I think it might be an idea to have something on the website about
"short" and "long" vowels, because there does seem to be some
confusion about this.
I've already said that the usage of "short a" and "long a" I most
often encounter refers to the varying pronunciations of words like
"bath" - "short a", as in "bad", in northern England and most of North
America; "long a", as in "father", in south-east England and the
southern hemisphere. (It's a bit more complicated in some of the
places I haven't mentioned.)
Jonathan
Bob Cunningham
<jonatha...@sheffield.ac.uk> said:
[...]
> I think it might be an idea to have something on the website about
> "short" and "long" vowels, because there does seem to be some
> confusion about this.
Long and short vowels (in the layman's sense of "long" and
"short") are illustrated to some extent on the AUE Web site
at http://tinyurl.com/eggg *.
The confusion arises because there are two disparate
meanings of "long" and "short" vowels: the meanings given to
the terms by phoneticians and the meanings many of us
learned when we were learning to read in elementary school.
In the phonetics meanings, "long" and "short" refer simply
to the actual durations of pronunciations.
It's natural to be puzzled about why in the world the terms
"long" and "short" are used in the elementary-school
meanings. The answer to this puzzle is that when the terms
were first used the vowels equivalent to the ones that are
now called long and short *were* pronounced with longer and
shorter durations. As pronunciations evolved this became
less true, but the terms continued to be used for the vowels
that used to be long and short in duration.
The "long" and "short" vowels I learned as a child can be
illustrated by the contrasting pairs "bate,bat"; "beet,bet";
"bite,bit"; "rode,rod"; "boot,but". (My vowel in "rod" is
the one many people -- including me -- use for the first
vowel in "father".)
Nothing was said in my elementary school about the sounds in
"bate" and "boat" being diphthongs. For that matter, when
we discuss diphthongs we tend to overlook the fact that in
many people's pronunciations some vowels are really
diphthongs that you might not expect to be, like the ones in
"bet" and "bit".
That observation is illustrated at
http://tinyurl.com/lsoo ** , where the diphthongal glide in
"hid" is comparable to that in "hayed", even though I was
making an effort to avoid glides in vowels that are not
usually called diphthongs.
A more striking illustration of glides is at
http://tinyurl.com/2xxpy *** , where you can see that the
speaker has significant amounts of glide in "hid", "head",
"had", "hod" and "hood".
*
http://www.alt-usage-english.org/ipa/nutshell.shtml .
**
http://www.exw6sxq.com/sparky/aue_related/formants/twelve_vowels_new.html
Janet
that everyone's American. Janet
> > I am glad to see your chart -- we've discussed here before how
> "short"
> > and "long" vowels mean different things outside the US than in it,
> but I
> > don't ever remember seeing a specific list for England or Australia.
> >
> > You say you learned this while learning Pitman Shorthand -- this was
> in
> > Australia, then, since probably you were over 14?
> >
I learned Pitman Shorthand in Australia. Janet
> >
Does this list match the experience of others outside the US, or is
> > there just too much nonstandardization of the concept?
>
I'm not sure whether the edition I learned Pitman Shorthand from was
published in Australia or England. But Pitman Publishing has or had
at one time companies or associated companies in Australia
(Melbourne), London, Johannesburg, New York, Toronto, California and
Nairobi. I have some old books.
I don't remember anyone disputing the short - long vowel system while
I was learning it. The only disputes of pronunciation I remember,
were 'auction' (whether the first vowel is 'aw' (awful) or 'o' (dot)-
we tend to pronounce it as 'o' in Australia) and whether the 'n' in
the surname 'Sinclair' was pronounced 'n' or 'ng'.
Janet
> It makes sense, phonetically, to me. That is, in each pair, the
> tongue positions of each vowel are similar, in my accent, and the one
> on the right is longer and/or "tenser". But I don't remember ever
> being taught vowels in those pairs, and I would think some of those
> pairs wouldn't work for all accents.
>
> > I'm thinking that if this does represent any sizeable region, we
> should
> > tuck it in our Website somewhere for future reference. Not if it's
> only
> > known to a handful of Australian shorthand users, though.
>
> I think it might be an idea to have something on the website about
> "short" and "long" vowels, because there does seem to be some
> confusion about this.
>
> I've already said that the usage of "short a" and "long a" I most
> often encounter refers to the varying pronunciations of words like
> "bath" - "short a", as in "bad", in northern England and most of North
> America; "long a", as in "father", in south-east England and the
> southern hemisphere. (It's a bit more complicated in some of the
> places I haven't mentioned.)
>
> Jonathan
In the actual book ('Pitman Shorthand New Course') 'bath' is shown
with a short 'a'. I pronounce it with a long 'a' since I came from
South-East England. West Australians (like me) tend also to use the
long 'a', although not as pronounced as some English people. In the
state of Victoria (over east) I have noticed, they use the short 'a'
for words like 'castle'. Janet