English in USA

[Michael H Covarrubias]

Quoting Tom Zurinskas <truespel at HOTMAIL.COM>:

> Right.  Call a friend that is not a linguist, a normal person.  Say "which
> two words have the same sounding vowel.

Interesting strategy: ask those who are not trained to note the difference
between phonology and and phonetics--phoneme and phone--to identify the sounds.
 If you ask most people how to make 'dog' and 'cat' plural you'll get almost
everyone to say that you add the same sound: an 's'.  We know that's not true.

> Then say sin, seen, sing. If you
> say these words as m-w.com says them (the voice not the notation), they
> should say "sin" is different if I'm right.  Do it with band,bank,bang and
> ask if any vowel is different. If I'm right band is different.

Again--It's one thing to argue perception and another to argue phonetics.
having listened to the vowels several times I do hear an effect of the following
nasal on the preceding vowel, but I don't agree that the vowels are raised.  a
nasalized vowel (as in 'sing') is not necessarily a high vowel (as in 'see').  A
 nasal/diphthongized [ae] ('sang') is not the same as a +ATR mid-front vowel [e]
('stare').

Michael



USA - MI4, OH3, MD3, MI13, ND5, MI3, IN1+
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   English Language & Linguistics
   Purdue University

   mcovarru at purdue.edu

   web.ics.purdue.edu/~mcovarru
  <http://wishydig.blogspot.com>

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