the good old days, and that pesky letter "shee" (formerly "shch")

[crosswhi at RICE.EDU]

You know, I really hesitated about writing in about this subject  
because it seems so far off the topic of Slavic languages. But then I  
realized that it is, after a few bobs and weaves, kind of relevant.  
The subject is the pronunciation of words like "back" in British  
English.

I've really enjoyed reading recent postings on this topic. I teach  
phonetics in the Linguistics Department at Rice University in Houston,  
and one of the topics I include in my intro phonetics class is how  
British and American differ phonetically.

John Dunn is quite correct in his observation that the British  
pronunciation of "back" and similar words has changed noticeably over  
the past several decades. In IPA transcription, the change is noted as  
one from [æ] to [a]. An important detail, though, is that modern  
British phoneticians adhere strongly to the official IPA, in which [a]  
refers to a fully open *front* vowel, while [æ] is a slightly higher  
vowel. So the change in pronunciation is one of lowering, not backing.

That's an important thing to note, I think, for Slavists, or anyone  
who studies the sounds of non-Germanic languages. This is one case  
where different transcription systems use the same symbol -- [a] -- to  
mean completely different things. In Slavic linguistics that's a  
non-front vowel, but in the official IPA, it's front.

If you've never looked at the *official* IPA vowel chart, it's worth a  
glance: http://www.langsci.ucl.ac.uk/ipa/vowels.html. You'll notice  
they *don't have* a symbol for a fully open central vowel. As I  
understand it, that's a principled stance on the part of the  
International Phonetic Association. The back-front dimension is  
shorter at the bottom of the vowel space than at the top, so there's  
not room for three categories down there (or so the story goes).

However, there was an article last year in the Journal of the IPA  
arguing that this should be revisited. They point out that the current  
system actually could mislead ESL students -- a speaker of Russian,  
Spanish, etc. might, for example, think that the official IPA [a] of  
modern British English should be equated with the low vowel of his/her  
native language, traditionally transcribed [a]. That would just lead  
to retention of foreign accent in words like "back," which must be  
counter the intentions of having an international phonetic alphabet in  
the first place. The same could be said for any language that has a  
"triangular" vowel inventory (only one low vowel) rather than the  
Germanic rectangular model.

A really great film clip, which I learned of from John Wells's  
phonetics blog, shows both an 1940-era ESL speaker of British English  
and an old-style speaker of British RP. Here's the URL:  
http://www.britishpathe.com/record.php?id=82205.  Concentrate on the  
words "Jack" and "Paddington," which both speakers say several times.  
They're almost like "Jeck" and "Peddington." If Russians or others are  
still learning that system for English, they will definitely stick out  
in today's UK.

A more modern British pronunciation can be heard in sentence #5 of the  
following online transcription exercise:  
http://www.ladefogeds.com/course/chapter2/exercises2/2hbritish.htm   
That is still a front vowel, but much lower than the "Jeck" of the  
film clip, and also lower than the present-day American [æ].

If you want to hear the full vowel inventory for both modern British  
and modern American, you can try the links below. The American speaker  
contrasts [?] and [?], but many Americans (like me) don't. I think  
it's cool that British has four low-ish vowels (æ/a, ?, ?, ?) where I  
only have TWO (æ, ?).

British: http://www.ladefogeds.com/vowels/chapter3/bbcenglish.html
American: http://www.ladefogeds.com/vowels/chapter3/amengvowels.html

Sorry for such a long post on something that's only tangentially  
Slavic. I think vowels are so cool -- I just get overexcited when the  
conversation turns that way and can't restrain myself...

Best,

Katherine.

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