ah/ awe

[Beverly Flanigan]

At 09:49 PM 10/2/2006, you wrote:
>In a message dated 10/2/06 7:34:01 PM, laurence.horn at YALE.EDU writes:
>
>
> > At 9:50 PM +0000 10/2/06, Tom Zurinskas wrote:
> > >>From: David Bowie <db.list at PMPKN.NET>
> > >>>
> > >>From:    Tom Zurinskas <truespel at HOTMAIL.COM>
> > >>>>  From: sagehen <sagehen at WESTELCOM.COM>
> > >>
> > >>>>  Tom, would you wipe out all dialectal differences in pursuit of this
> > >>>>  pronounce-as-spelled campaign?  How would you deal, e.g., with the
> > >>>>  diphthongal i with which most northerners pronounce /light, sight,
> > >>might/,
> > >>>>  &c?
> > >>
> > >>>  I'm not familiar with that dipthong.  In m-w.com those words above do
> > >>not
> > >>>  have vowels that are two-phthongs to me.
> > >>
> > >>The standard pronunciations of the vowels in those words are
> > >>diphthongs--in fact, pronouncing those vowels with monophthongs is
> > >>rather markedly non-standard. I'm starting to become very curious as to
> > >>where your assumptions about the technicalities of English pronunciation
> > >>come from.
> > >
> > >My assumptions are my own.  Are your assumptions someone elses?  Hwo's
> > >(Sorry that's "who's", I'm practicing saying "wh" as "hw") are they?.
> >
> > The point on "who" is that nobody anywhere pronounces it /hwu/ (or
> > /wu/), only as /hu/.  I guess this would be anathema to the alphabet
> > principal, though, since it's spelled the same as the other "wh"
> > words that come out /hw/ in the relevant dialects.
> >
> > >   Words
> > >/light, sight, might/ have one phthong as I hear them in m-w.com.
> > >
> > Um, no.  I just checked and they're all definitely diphthongs (or
> > two-phthongs if you insist), with a vowel nucleus beginning with /a/
> > and ending with /i/.  For them to be monophthongs, they'd be
> > homonymous with "lot", "sot", and "mott" as you've indicated you
> > pronounce the latter set of words ("ah", not "awe").  They are indeed
> > pronounced that way in some areas of the southern U.S., but not by
> > the m-w.com sot...er, site.
> >
> > LH
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------
> > The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
> >
> >
>Larry, don't you have the wrong examples? Since <lot>, <sot> and <mott> are
>spelled (which I guess Mr. Z would have to pronounce as two syllables, by the
>way, according to "the spelling principal") with <o>, he'd have to pronounced
>them with the rounded vowel right? Like <fog> and <god> and <dog>?
>The monophthongal or weakened-offglide vowel nucleus in <hide> and <down> in
>the South has an onset that varies between the vowel of <pan> and a slightly
>less open vowel (about the same to my ears as the vowel in Boston r-less <car>
>).
>
>Anyway, as anyone who has every listened closely knows, the sounds in
>Standard English <pine>, <pound>, and <spoil> are all dipthongs. For that
>matter, the
>sound in American English <gate> is a diphthong. Mr. Z is confused, I think,
>because the vowel chart in his dictionary uses single symbols for these
>complex sounds. He doesn't understand the difference between letters and
>sounds.
>
>------------------------------------------------------------
>The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

Finally, we're getting to the heart of the problem:  Tom Z. thinks of
diphthongs as letters rather than sounds.  Tom, a diphthong is a
combination of two vowel sounds, not a combination of two letters, and
we're using international phonetic symbols (in brackets [  ]) to signal
sound, not spelling (spelling is marked with < >).  If you listen closely
to your own pronunciation of Ron's three (or four) examples above, I
suspect you'll hear two vowels gliding together in each, but you won't
understand our phonetic representation of them unless you learn the
International Phonetic Alphabet (not to be confused with the "alphabetic
principle").  As Paul said, a good basic course in phonetics would
help!  But now I'm sounding like a teacher who's taught this about a
million times, so I'll recommend a small, easy book you might want to
buy:  George Yule, _The Study of Language_.  I can't recall the publisher
offhand, but a bookstore can look it up for you.  It's good on lots of
aspects of language structure, acquisition, and use.

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org