ah/ awe

[Gordon, Matthew J.]

My point about the wh/w distinction was to give you a sense of what you're up against. You seem convinced that a merger can be reversed by explicit teaching, so I'm suggesting you try it yourself. Train yourself to pronounce <wh> words with [hw]. Then tape record your speech for a few days and see how consistently you keep it up.


-----Original Message-----
From: American Dialect Society on behalf of Tom Zurinskas
Sent: Sun 10/1/2006 11:04 PM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject:      Re: ah/ awe
 
Thanks Gordon,

By "having the merger between "cot" and "caught" means you say "cot" for
both I assume.  What should be said is that you have the displacement of
"awe" by "ah" to be clear.

Granted in flowing speech we say things auto (otto) matically.  I'm
basically saying that when teachers are teaching phonics, that they point
out that "al" "au" and "aw" are predominantly said as "awe" and that it is a
favored pronunciation that retains the alphabet principal.  They should
train themselves to speak "awe" to set a good example.  The basic point is
to retain the alphabetical principal, not go away from it.

Regarding "wh" in the beginning of words, They are pronounced "w" in the
reference sources for my dictionary, such as American Heritage and m-w.com.
So I make no distinction for "wh", which I understand is pronounced "hw" by
some folks.  Nobody really says "w" followed by "h" for "wh" as I understand
it.

Tom Z



>From: "Gordon, Matthew J." <GordonMJ at MISSOURI.EDU>

>
>Tom:
>Speaking as a native US English speaker who has the merger (i.e. who has =
>the same vowel in 'cot' and 'caught' etc.), I can confirm that the =
>difficulty of undoing the merger. It's not that I can't make the 'awe' =
>sound, rather it's that I have no need for it since it does not function =
>as a distinctive sound (distinctive from the 'ah') in my phonology. More =
>to your point, I have phonetic training and study pronunciation =
>professionally, and I'm not confident that I could fake having the 'awe =
>- ah' distinction for more than a few minutes even if I tried. I might =
>remember to use 'awe' in some words, but I wouldn't be able to deploy it =
>consistently without thinking over my sentences ahead of time.
>
>Here's another analogy for you. According to your truespel system ( =
>http://www.truespel.com/phonemes2.html ), it seems you do not have a =
>phonemic distinction between the initial consonants in 'where' and =
>'wear'. Do you think you could learn to make such a distinction and use =
>the 'wh' sound consistently in your natural speech? FWIW, in my research =
>I occasionally interview people who have been exposed to the wh/w =
>distinction by teachers (usually in theater classes) and none of these =
>people uses the 'wh' sound except when asked to read a minimal pair like =
>'where' and 'wear'. So, I have my doubts about anyone's ability to undo =
>this or any merger. In fact, the 'wh/w' merger should be relatively =
>simple to undo because it's so clearly and consistently marked =
>orthographically unlike the 'cot/caught' merger  for which each phoneme =
>has a variety of spellings.
>
>-Matt Gordon

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