Fwd: cross-post from Linguist List

[Laurence Horn]

as usual, responses should go to the poster, Mr. Kun, as well as our
list; I thought the claims reported below would be of interest to
some of us.  I'm not sure on the first whether the claim is that some
weird Australian speakers differentiate "libel" and "Bible", which
strikes me as implausible, or (contrary to the description below)
that they don't rhyme the two, which seems like a more plausible
claim (as plausible as the the two below it, anyway).

Larry

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LINGUIST List: Vol-16-2163. Fri Jul 15 2005. ISSN: 1068 - 4875.

Subject: 16.2163, Qs: Irish Language Speakers; Phonemic Distictions

Date: Fri, 15 Jul 2005 12:13:06
From: Tom Kun < tomkun83 at hotmail.com >
Subject: Phonemic Distictions in English

1. Some people have been arguing on the Antimoon forum
(http://www.antimoon.com/forum) about whether there might be a
''libel-bible'' split going on in Australia.  The whole mess started when
someone posted a huge minimal pair survey on the UniLang forum, and one of
the pairs was ''libel-bible.''  Three Australians answered that they
pronounced them differently.  Someone then asked a question on the Antimoon
forum about it, posting a link to the UniLang survey.  The Antimooners
wrote it all off as ''troll activity.''  So is there any real split going on?

2. Speaking of Australia, some Australians I've met on forums such as the
ones mentioned above claim a slight distinction between ''bred'' and
''bread.''  For them the vowel in ''bread'' is slightly longer.  Anyone
know anything more?

3. I have a friend who was born in Alaska, grew up in Arizona and Florida,
and most recently has lived in North Carolina.  She pronounces ''there''
and ''they're'' as [De:r] but ''their'' as [D3:r].  And yes, she is aware
of it and thinks we're all strange for pronouncing all three the same.  I
have never heard of any such phenomenon, is it a characteristic of some region?

Linguistic Field(s): Phonology
                      Sociolinguistics






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LINGUIST List: Vol-16-2163



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