English in USA

[Wilson Gray]

You know, if we could all just get along with respect to the exact
phonetic representation of each English phoneme in every possible
environment, I'll bet that we could cut the rate of sound change in
English in half! :-)

-Wilson

On 11/15/06, FRITZ JUENGLING <juengling_fritz at salkeiz.k12.or.us> wrote:
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       FRITZ JUENGLING <juengling_fritz at SALKEIZ.K12.OR.US>
> Subject:      Re: English in USA
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> The question was really about 'phonemes' vs. 'phones.'
>
> >>> wuxxmupp2000 at YAHOO.COM 11/15/2006 12:02 PM >>>
> If I hadn't "heard" it, the word might just as well have been
> _Unglish_: "a presumptive stage of development past Inglish."
>
>   JL
>
> FRITZ JUENGLING <juengling_fritz at SALKEIZ.K12.OR.US> wrote:
>   ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender: American Dialect Society
> Poster: FRITZ JUENGLING
> Subject: Re: English in USA
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> How can you hear a *phoneme*?
> Fritz J
>
> >>> wuxxmupp2000 at YAHOO.COM 11/15/2006 9:42 AM >>>
>
> The *phoneme* I hear, however, is unmistakably / I /.
>
> If Tom has some form of "barred-i" in the initial syllable -
> something tending toward
> / E / - he may hear the tiny [ i ]-glide more prominently.
>
> But in terms of phonemes, MW says / I / in both exx.
>
> JL
>
>
>
>
> Laurence Horn wrote:
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> Sender: American Dialect Society
> Poster: Laurence Horn
> Subject: Re: English in USA
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> At 9:05 PM -0500 11/14/06, Alice Faber wrote:
> >Laurence Horn wrote:
> >>At 6:32 PM -0500 11/14/06, Joel S. Berson wrote:
> >>>At 11/14/2006 02:29 PM, Paul Johnston wrote:
> >>>>It's not W CT either--or, I'd be very surprised if it was.
> >>>
> >>>It's not "Eenglish" in NYC, at least not when I was growing up
> >>>there. So I too would be surprised if it's W CT, that being NY
> >>>Yankee country. :-)
> >>>
> >>It's not "Eenglish" in South Central CT either, or on www.m-w.com,
> >>where the speaker quite clearly renders [INlIS], rhyming with, well,
> >>Singlish. Of course, I tested this on a computer in South Central
> >>CT; maybe it's different on computers in W CT...
> >>
> >
> >Well, my parents still have dialup, so I doubt I'll be able to try it
> >out when I'm at their house for Thanksgiving. Oh, well.
>
> Anyone else hear the www.m-w.com pronunciation as "Eenglish"? Of
> course maybe all our ears (and our spectrographs) have been
> corrupted...
>
> LH
>
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