LL-L "Phonology" 2005.05.07 (04) [E]

[Lowlands-L]

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L O W L A N D S - L * 07.JUN.2005 (04) * ISSN 189-5582 * LCSN 96-4226
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A=Afrikaans Ap=Appalachian B=Brabantish D=Dutch E=English F=Frisian
L=Limburgish LS=Lowlands Saxon (Low German) N=Northumbrian
S=Scots Sh=Shetlandic V=(West) Flemish Z=Zeelandic (Zeêuws)
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From: Gary Taylor <gary_taylor_98 at yahoo.com>
Subject: Phonology

Hi Ingmar, Ed and all

Ingmar, you wrote:

Yes, but how can anybody mistaken <ou> for [y] - since
those sounds
don't
look alike at all - not even in Canadian?

The problem is for English speakers that our /u:/
phoneme is currently in the process of change. A very
conservative pronunciation of /u:/ (as uttered by the
Queen for example) is indeed [u:], however more modern
varieties tend towards [y:] (except when it"s before
an /l/ or /r/. This is the case in Britain anyway, and
I think partly so in the US. This is exactly the same
thing as happened to Dutch and French long u (also
North Frisian, Swedish and Norwegian). So for an
English person the pronunciations of [u:] and [y:] are
both reinterpreted as the phoneme /u:/, thus the
confusion. It's why we always have problems making the
difference in Dutch and German between these two.

And just a quick comment to Ed. It's been pointed out
that there is a difference between /ou/ before a
voiceless and /ou/ before a voiced consonant. I would
tend to say that this is a neologism in Canadian
English, and not a remnant of the former
pronunciation, seeing as it doesn't appear as a
left-over in any of the dialects in Britain, as far as
I know.

Gary

http://hometown.aol.com/taylor16471/myhomepage/index.html

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From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
Subject: Phonology

Lowlanders,

I totally share Gary's take on this (above).  I just left my nose out of
this thread because it's recurrent and to me somewhat tedious.

It is easily overlooked that in most English dialects today the supposed
[u:] has in most environments less lip rounding and is fronted to somewhere
between central (IPA barred "u", SAMPA }, like long "u" in Norwegian,
Swedish and Saxony German) and [y] (as in German _grün_ and Dutch _vuur_).
This fact alone explains a lot about English speakers' perception and their
problems in distinguing foreign /u/ and /ü/ and perhaps their faulty
imitation of Canadian /au/ (which is a gross generalization, considering
that there is a lot of dialectical variety within Canada).

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

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