~Feenlend

[JAMES A. LANDAU Netscape. Just the Net You Need.]

I think I know where Tom Zurinskas is coming from on the pronunciation of “sing” and where he went astray.

In English (I have no idea whether it happens in other languages) the presence of the /ng/ or /nk/ phoneme alters the sound of the preceding vowel, an effect most notable in some of the so-called “short vowels” such as “i” of “hit”, “a” of “hat”, “e” of “het”, and “u” of “hut”.

My usual example is “Lancaster”.  The “a” is noticeably different if you say /lan kas t at r/ rather than /lank kas t at r/ or /lank as t at r/ or even /lang kas t at r/.

Why is this?  Hopefully the phoneticians on the list will correct me if I’m wrong, but it appears to me that the tip of the tongue is raised for English /n/ but dropped for English /ng/ or /nk/.  The movement of the tongue is enough to change the sound of the preceding vowel.

In the case of short i, the difference in sound is enough to make the vowel in /ing/ or /ink/ different enough from /in/ that it sounds like a different vowel, one somewhat closer to /ee/.  But it is not /ee/.  My former boss Tribhuvan Singh did not pronounce his last name as /seeng/ but as /sing/ (with aspirated /ng/, of course).

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As for “Feenlend”, that is simple.  Finnish, as far as I know, lacks the “short i” sound and therefore someone from Finnland who has not mastered English phonetics would be unable to say “Finnlend”.

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For those interested in collecting early citations for “superdelegate”:

http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/

<quote>
We'll probably never know who first came up with "superdelegates", but press and politicians both started using it in 1982, after a Democratic party commission voted to add hundreds of uncommitted delegates to the rolls. From the Associated Press, January 15th, 1982:

The major question worked out in the negotiations between the Mondale and Kennedy factions was how many of the elected officials should be uncommitted. The Kennedy people wanted as few as possible. The Mondale forces wanted the uncommitteds to be about 30 percent of the total.

The figure finally agreed upon would be 14.2 percent.

Once that deal was struck and the compromise was presented to the commission by Rep. Geraldine Ferraro of New York, the major issue during a long night of debate was whether what Mrs. Ferraro called a "super delegate category" should be evenly split between men and women.
</quote>

Also, somebody (I don’t know if it was the Clinton campaign) decided recently to refer to superdelegates as “automatic delegates”.

           James A. Landau
           test engineer
           Northrop-Grumman Information Technology
           8025 Black Horse Pike, Suite 300
           West Atlantic City NJ 08232 USA
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FAKWD JNXJX MYQQG BQQWP NLOMA KZQUH CYDPG KYEQK
SUSRK MRHST GPIIQ LHECA
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