pron. of just

[Matthew Gordon]

I suppose that like Humpty Dumpty you're free to have words mean just what
you choose them to mean, but in phonetics schwa is the name of a particular
symbol that describes one particular sound and this is how M-W use it in
their notation. Some transcription systems distinguish between the stressed
and unstressed vowel in "abut" - using schwa for the first and wedge (^) for
the second - but I've always taken this to be principally a phonemic issue
with little phonetic difference involved for many Americans' pronunciations.
M-W clearly sided with the phonetic evidence on this, or maybe they have
something against wedges.


On 2/27/09 1:59 PM, "Tom Zurinskas" <truespel at HOTMAIL.COM> wrote:

> Schwa stands for lots of sounds for most notations.  Take "dirigible" as
> pronounced and foespeld in m-w.com,
> di·ri·gi·ble  Pronunciation:\ˈdir-ə-jə-bəl, də-ˈri-jə-\
> There are three schwas here, non having the "uh" sound. (if the copy/paste
> comes out.)
>
> When the second "i" was stressed above it was spelled as a short i, but when
> not stressed it was spelled as a schwa.  Why should stress change the notation
> of the same sound?  The last syllable has a schwa but is pronounced as in bull
> ~bool not "uh".
>
> Schwa is a catch all for unstressed vowels.  It often stands for short i,
> short u, short oo and others.  A stressed vowel should never be foespeld a
> schwa.  In fact any notation that uses schwa is not as accurate as truespel
> which spells them all out.
>
>
> Tom Zurinskas, USA - CT20, TN3, NJ33, FL5+
> see truespel.com
>
>
> ----------------------------------------
>> Date: Fri, 27 Feb 2009 13:25:00 -0600
>> From: gordonmj at MISSOURI.EDU
>> Subject: pron. of just
>> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>>
>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>> -----------------------
>> Sender: American Dialect Society
>> Poster: Matthew Gordon
>> Subject: pron. of just
>> -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> --
>>
>> The first pronunciation of 'just' listed by m-w.com is /j at st/ where /@/=
>> schwa. I think most of us would argue that this IS the usual pronunciation
>> of adj. 'just' and even of adv. 'just' at least when it bears some stress in
>> a sentence. They use a schwa there b/c that's the usual phonetic symbol for
>> this sound (or one of them anyway).
>>
>>
>> On 2/27/09 1:00 PM, "Tom Zurinskas" wrote:
>>> ... I don't think anyone would argue that the
>>> first pronunciation of "just" by m-w.com is usual. It's a solid short u. Why
>>> m-w.com uses a schwa there I'll never know. Unfortunately, for all short u's
>>> they use \ \ as u in abut, (an upside down "e" that apparently won't copy
>>> paste) . Very very unfortunate notation. Everyone understands using a letter
>>> "u" for the "uh" sound.
>>>
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
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