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

[crosswhi at RICE.EDU]

Thanks for your replies Paul, Will, and Susan!

You know, this actually has more of a Slavic relevance than I thought.  
I just checked in Bondarko's Fonetika Sovremennogo Russkogo Iazyka  
(1998), and she is completely using IPA, down to using [ɑ] for  
orthographic a, although she notes it is a little fronted compared to  
other languages that have that vowel. Judging from the charts on page  
264, it looks like she's got fronted allophones (presumably due to  
palatalized consonants) mostly clustering around *low front* [a], with  
only a few near the higher front vowels [æ] and [ɛ]. So that is  
completely in line with what we were talking about for the British low  
vowels.

Paul, you're right that the British vowel change also has some  
centralization to it. It would be more accurate to say "lowering with  
some backing," I guess. But as you say, not to an actual back vowel  
like [ɑ]. The phenomenon you're referring to in American English is  
described in the literature as "BATH raising." If you search for that  
phrase in Google books, you can read a great description in vol. 3 of  
Wells's Accents of English. The British pronunciation of [pɑ:s] for  
"pass" can be similarly sought out in vol. 1 as "TRAP-BATH split". And  
as I understand it, for speakers with an advanced Northern Cities  
shift (i.e., where the sound change has "gotten further"), fronting of  
[ɑ] gives a new [æ], with [stæp] signs and dentists in nice white  
[smæks]. Finally, in case you're interested, the American speaker in  
Ladefoged's materials did grow up in Ithaca -- good call.

Best wishes,

Katherine

--
Katherine Crosswhite
crosswhi at rice.edu

Quoting "Paul B. Gallagher" <paulbg at PBG-TRANSLATIONS.COM>:

> Katherine wrote:
>
> (I would be more polite, but you didn't provide a last name).
>
> Thank you for your fascinating post, and for the audio links.
>
> From what I'm hearing in the BBC rendition of /æ/, it's  
> significantly higher than my /æ/ in "back," which is quite low. It's  
> not as high as their /ɛ/, however, so the distinction is maintained;  
> I would say their /ɛ/ is also somewhat higher than mine.
>
> Unfortunately, Ladefoged does not seem to take account of the  
> dramatic and diverse changes underway in American English /æ/, and  
> the American English audio clip demonstrates one of the problems.
>
> First, in a band of dialects from about New York City to the DC  
> metro area, many speakers distinguish a pure /æ/ as in "back" (which  
> we don't hear in Ladefoged's clip) from a diphthong that might be  
> conventionally designated /ǣ/, roughly [ɛə] in my speech but ranging  
> upward through [eə] and [ɪə] and occasionally as far as [iə]. This  
> [ɛə] is what we hear in the Ladefoged clip for American /æ/. In  
> dialects like mine, "can" = "to be able" is /kæn/ = [kæn] and "can"  
> = "metal container" is /kǣn/ = [kɛən]. This phonemic split is why  
> I'm so conscious of the nuances with these vowels, and why I find it  
> difficult to listen to speakers who would have Mary get Maried and  
> have a Mary Christmas (I have three different vowels, and only the  
> first one is /ǣ/ = [ɛə].
>
> Second, the Northern Cities Shift, which affects a region roughly  
> from Albany to Chicago, /æ/ is globally raised and diphthongized  
> (they have no words with pure /æ/), often as far as [iə]. An  
> excellent examplar is the journalist Bob Woodward, who speaks of  
> "going biack to Cianada to hiave a chiat with a friend in  
> Siaskiatchewan," etc. As a speaker, I cian't stiand it, but as a  
> linguist I find it fascinating. Hillary Clinton also does this when  
> she lets her guard down, though less so, and she's added a thick  
> overlay of standard American so it's not so easy to observe.
>
> Both of these sound changes are strongly reminiscent of the  
> evolution of Common Slavic /æ/ from *ai, *oi etc. through ѣ to its  
> various modern reflexes. It remains to be seen where American will  
> take this, but the parallels are hard to overlook.
>
> There's a lot more going on with American /æ/ elsewhere, but space  
> and topic limitations prevent a thorough description.
>
>> 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 quite a relief -- I was imagining a much backer vowel. Of  
> course I don't need to point out to you that lowering a front vowel  
> also means backing it somewhat. Still, the vowel heard in the clip  
> was nowhere near the /a/ = [ɑ] in "father" that I thought he meant.
>
>> 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).
>
> This is more a question of classification -- how do we divide up the  
> vowel space? -- than of reality. For speakers of languages with one  
> low vowel, the forced choice between front /æ/ and back /a/ makes no  
> sense unless the vowel patterns strongly with one set or the other.  
> E.g., Finnish has an /a/ that patterns with /o,u/ and an /æ/ that  
> patterns with /i,e,y,œ/, but Spanish couldn't care less. As you say.
>
>> 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.
>
> Yes, and they sound veddy stuffy to an American ear, too.
>
>> 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].
>
> For this, I have /hɪz pæl pækt hɪz bǣg wɪð ǰækɪts/, where /ǣ/ in  
> "bag" represents [ɛə] as noted above, and the British speaker in the  
> clip definitely has raising at the end of /æ/ in "bag," too, and  
> perhaps a palatal [ǵ] as well (chicken or egg? I don't know). As for  
> the other three instances of /æ/, I find them completely natural,  
> and similar to what I would produce. These are *not* lower than my  
> /æ/ as in "back" or "can" = "be able," but they *are* lower than my  
> /ǣ/ as in "bag" or "can" = "metal container."[FN]
>
>> 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 [ɑ] and [ɔ], but many Americans (like  
>> me) don't. I think it's cool that British has four low-ish vowels  
>> (æ/a, ɑ:, ɔ:, ɒ) where I only have TWO (æ, ɑ).
>
> I hope I've supplied the correct vowels here where your  
> transcription was garbled in transmission. Please forgive any  
> errors. I was tempted to include /aə/ and /ʌ/ in your inventory of  
> British "lowish vowels," but I had to limit myself to four guesses.
>
>> 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...
>
> Thanks for sharing.
>
> --------------------
> [FN]--I am referring, of course, to pronunciations in stressed  
> position. Like most Americans, I can reduce the vowel in "can" to  
> schwa or even eliminate it entirely: "Sure, /I/ c'n do that." And  
> just the other day I asked an order taker at Wendy's, "C'ave a pack  
> o' ketchup?" [kævə pækə kɛčəp].
>
> -- 
> War doesn't determine who's right, just who's left.
> --
> Paul B. Gallagher
> pbg translations, inc.
> "Russian Translations That Read Like Originals"
> http://pbg-translations.com
>
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