[Ads-l] Analysis of ~ool (as in "wool") for word endings

[Herbert F. Stahlke]

There are two factors affecting the vowel in "children."  First <ch> is rounded in English.  Second  the /l/ is postvocalic, so in  American English it's velarized, which means the back of the tongue is raised into the position for the "short oo" vowel.  Between these two factors the <i> is inevitably going to sound like "oo."

On July 23, 2020, at 1:38 PM, Tom Zurinskas <truespel at hotmail.com> wrote:

Since we were discussing ~ool (as in "wool") applying to the pronunciation of the word "children" ~chooldrin (which I hear often especially from teachers), I looked at thetruespel  5k word frequency database for words ending in ~ool.

My data show that this "short oo" vowel is present in many word endings (about) 2% of words in text, but unfortunately expressed as schwa in many dictionaries.  This is not good for teaching pronunciation.  Truespel replaces all schwas with actual vowels from voicings of talking American English dictionaries.  See ~ool word endings analysis here.   https://justpaste.it/oolending


Tom Zurinskas,  Originally from SW Conn 20 yrs,  college NE Tenn 3,  work SE NJ  33,  resides SE Florida 18...  truespel.com







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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org