ah/ awe

[Tom Zurinskas]

A vowel is a whole phoneme.  So we should hear "mah-eat" for "might"?
That's not happening in m-w.com.  Suppose we say. "Ah-ee saw my ma eat with
all her mah-eat.  Sounds Australian.

I hear one sound for long a.  What two vowel sounds are projected for it as
a diphthong?  How about long o?  Or long e?  Are they diphthongs?

Tom Z

>From: Benjamin Zimmer <bgzimmer at BABEL.LING.UPENN.EDU>
>Or one could look up "diphthong" in the American Heritage Dictionary
>and find this definition:
>
>http://www.bartleby.com/61/83/D0238300.html
>"A complex speech sound or glide that begins with one vowel and
>gradually changes to another vowel within the same syllable, as (oi)
>in _boil_ or (i-macron) in _fine_."
>
>Or, similarly, from the New Oxford American Dictionary:
>
>"a sound formed by the combination of two vowels in a single syllable,
>in which the sound begins as one vowel and moves toward another (as in
>_coin_, _loud_, and _side_)."
>
>Or if Wikipedia is one's cup of tea, try:
>
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diphthong#English
>
>
>--Ben Zimmer
>

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