ah/ awe

[Tom Zurinskas]

Thanks Arnold.  However, I wasn't refering to my own dialect.  I was
refering to "right" as spoken in m-w.com.  The verb is one phthoung not two
as I hear it there.  Good to hear you say that it is entirely possible to
say long i as a one phthong.  I agree.  However I think that long i as a two
phthong would be rare.  I hear in Australia "roit".  Perhaps UK has
"rah-eat".  But USA has "eye" as on phthong.

Perhaps you could point out some real saliant words with the two phthong.

Tom Z



>From: "Arnold M. Zwicky" <zwicky at CSLI.STANFORD.EDU>
>Reply-To: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>Subject: Re: ah/ awe
>Date: Tue, 3 Oct 2006 07:20:56 -0700
>
>---------------------- Information from the mail header
>-----------------------
>Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>Poster:       "Arnold M. Zwicky" <zwicky at CSLI.STANFORD.EDU>
>Subject:      Re: ah/ awe
>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>On Oct 2, 2006, at 9:33 PM, Tom Zurinskas wrote:
>
> > ...Note the words "rot" and "right" .  The word "right" does not
> > start out as
> > "rot" and then with a wee transition vowel in it before "t."  It
> > goes right
> > from the "r" to long i then to "t".  The tongue is in a different
> > position
> > for the "o" in "rot" than for the "i" in "right".  The tongue does not
> > transition during "right".
>
>you're describing a dialect of english here, but it's very much a
>minority dialect.  for some southern speakers (and some others) the /
>aj/ phoneme is monophtongized.  the result is (usually) phonetically
>distinct from the /a/ phoneme (as in "rot"), in length and usually
>quality as well.  (for a great many speakers, not just from the
>south, the initial part of /aj/ is not phonetically identical to /a/,
>but is somewhat fronted, in the direction of ash; this is the sound
>that remains in monophthongization.)
>
>to be sure that you do monophthongize /aj/, we'd need to hear you,
>watch you produce words, record you, and analyze your speech
>acoustically.
>
>one problem here is that it can be difficult to listen for phonetic
>detail in your own speech; perception tends to be skewed by a variety
>of factors, and it takes real training to get at all  good at
>listening to yourself.  everyone who's taught intro linguistics,
>phonetics, or sociolinguistics has run up against these problems in a
>number of students.  (illustrative exercise: describe the initial
>*sound* -- not phoneme -- in "try", in phonetic detail.  hint: it is
>*not* a voiceless alveolar stop.)
>
>a great many american (and british) speakers have been studied, and
>the large majority of them have diphthongal /aj/ (in the sense that
>there are two different steady states in its articulation).
>diphthongal /aj/ is standard, and that's why it's the pronunciation
>given in dictionaries.  you might have a non-standard pronunciation
>here.  but we're all a bit dubious, especially since you say you grew
>up in connecticut, which is not usually reported as a
>monophthongizing area.
>
>another possibility is that you do have a monophthongal pronunciation
>(or a pronunciation with only a brief offglide, like the ones in /o/
>and /e/), but in only a few words.  "right" is both a high-frequency
>word (such words are especially prone to reductions) and a word with
>a voiceless stop following the vowel in question (vowels are shorter
>before voiceless stops than they are before voiced stops, and very
>much shorter there than they are before sonorants or in open
>syllables).  so in addition to looking at "right", you should try
>"night", "fight", "bite", "like", "ripe", etc. (high frequency,
>voiceless stop), "kite", "bike", "trite", etc. (lower frequency,
>voiceless stop), "wide", "pride", "tried" (voiced stop), "nine",
>"crime", "file", etc. (sonorant), "buy", "guy", "sigh", "fry", etc.
>(open syllable).
>
>arnold (zwicky at csli.stanford.edu)
>
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