British Dialects Book

[Mark A Mandel]

On Fri, 20 Sep 2002, Dennis R. Preston wrote:

#>I don't understand what a phonemic (since it is a mental
#>representation) pronunciation is. Nobody ever pronounced a phoneme.

Let's try an example, made up a-purpose:

        sought. vb: past tense and perfect participle of "seek".
        /s O t/

where the phonemic symbol /O/ is defined as the vowel of "caught",
*whatever that is phonetically for you*. If you merge it with /a/ as
[a], you'll say [sat]. If you merge it with /a/ as [O], or don't merge
it, you'll say [sOt]. In any case, your pronunciation will be the
correct one for whatever dialect you speak.

Howzat?

-- Mark M.