Chinglish

[Mark Mandel]

(Damn, forgot to turn off rich formatting. Sorry, folks.)

To Scot and Larry in particular (quoted letters below):

Save your breath/fingers, guys. Tom is not just clueless, but totally
unclueable. He makes it a point of pride that he has never studied
linguistics or phonetics in the, I think, 20-some years he's been
trying to peddle his crank theories. He'll never crack a textbook:
that would be tantamount to admitting that it's all been a waste.

As to whether he really pronounces words as they are written, or at
least believes that he does: Earlier I picked one of his first posts
at random and found this gem:

>>>>

http://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0610C&L=ADS-L&P=R3559&I=-3
18 Oct 2006

I've noticed a change in pronunciaiton of "children".  I would assume it to
be ~childrin (~ denotes truespel notation).  But I'm hearing everywhere
~chooldrin (where ~ool is as in ~wool).

Not that I like it.  I prefer speech to be as close to tradspel (traditional
spelling) as possible.  Wandering away from it violates the alphabetic
principle.

<<<<

That last paragraph says it.

m a m

On Thu, Aug 28, 2008 at 10:38 PM, Scot LaFaive <slafaive at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >I'd call it an allophone of "g" in "singing".
>
> Tom, I'm not sure anyone would call it that. Regardless, you are missing the
> big point here: for most people, words like "sing" and "finger" have no [g]
> sound. It isn't [s]+[I]+[n]+[g].....it's [s]+[I]+[ng]. There is a big
> difference between the [g] and [ng] sounds. Please refer to any respectable
> book on phonology for more information.
>
> >I personally have two "g" s for "singing". I gues you have none.  Must
> sound like sinnin'.
>
> I don't think I've ever heard anyone pronounce "singing" with two [g]
> sounds; I usually hear two [ng] sounds.
>
> >I once make a list of words where the "g" is supposed to be silent.  Words
> like finger, singer, linger, dinger.
>
> I've also never heard these pronounced without the [ng] sound.
>
> Scot



On Thu, Aug 28, 2008 at 10:44 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu> wrote:

At 2:25 AM +0000 8/29/08, Tom Zurinskas wrote:
>Paul,
>
>I'd call it an allophone of "g" in "singing".  I
>can hear in m-w.com an weak "g" for sing.
>There's something there because "singing" does
>not sound like sinning.  I personally have two
>"g" s for "singing".  I gues you have none.
>Must sound like sinnin'.

Tom, do you really not know what a velar nasal
is?  And if so, are you not prepared to look it
up?  And if if not, are you sure you really want
to lecture us on phonetics?

>I once make a list of words where the "g" is
>supposed to be silent.  Words like finger,
>singer, linger, dinger.  Folks could not pick
>out the ones where the "g" was silent.

????  What do you mean by a silent "g"?  Many, I
would hazard to say most, speakers of U.S.
English have a [g] after the velar nasal
represented by the <ng> in "finger" and "linger",
but not in "singer" and "dinger" (any more than
in "sing" or "ding"), but I am quite sure all
English speakers have velar nasals in each of
these words, not alveolar ones.  Your mention of
"sinnin'" for "singing" is a red herring
(although of course many speakers do have an
alveolar, at least some of the time,
corresponding to the *second* <ng> in "singing"
as opposed to the first).  What is a silent "g"?
Is it what I have in "gnostic" and "gnome"?

>  If some dialects have silent "g"s there, I
>would think they are in the minority.

Are you really claiming that you pronounce "sing"
with a (non-nasal) velar stop, and "singing" with
two?

LH

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