pron. of just

[Herb Stahlke]

Tom,

The first vowel of 'linguistic" and the third in "dirigible" are not
the same.  That of "linguistic," while not the /i/ that I think you
suggest, is not a reduced vowel either.  The third vowel of
"dirigible" is reduced. Reduced vowels in English typically become
schwa, but surrounding consonants can modify that, as the
palato-alveolar africate /dZ/ does in "just" (adv.) and "dirigible,"
raising the schwa to barred-i.  The distinction between the two sounds
is real, but it is allophonic here.

Your use of "oo" before the final /l/ of "dirigible" also reflects a
faulty assumption on your part, that there is in fact a vowel in that
syllable.  Final unstressed /l/ in English is typically syllabic, that
is, it is the vowel and final consonant of the syllable combined.
There is no oo or schwa or any other vowel before it.  Your sense that
the vowel oo occurs there probably arises from the fact that
syllable-final /l/ is velarized, that is, the back of the tongue is
raised in the same gesture that produces the vowel of "put," which you
write as oo.  What you're doing is interpreting an allophonic feature
of final /l/ as a vowel, a misunderstanding of what's going on
phonetically.

I understand that you've trained yourself to listen closely to sounds.
 The problem is that you've trained yourself and so have not benefited
from someone who really is expert in hearing, distinguishing, and
teaching the sounds of English and other languages.  You would benefit
from a course in phonetics, as well as an intro to linguistics.

As to the words below, MW.com follows a common convention of using
schwa in more than one way. MW makes no distinction between the two
vowels of "sofa" or "abut" on the widely accepted premise that schwa
is the unstressed allophone of inverted v.  Further, instead of using
syllabic consonants in "her" and "bottle" they use a vowel before the
consonant, namely, schwa.  For a readership unfamiliarwith syllabic
consonants, that's a reasonable solution even if it's not phonetically
accurate.  As to the first pronunciation of "forehead," remember the
nursery rhyme

There was a little girl
who had a little curl
right in the middle of her forehead.

When she was good
she was very very good

But when she was bad
she was horrid.

The rhyme works only for those, largely British, dialects that use the
first pronunciation, rhyming with "horrid."

Herb

On Fri, Feb 27, 2009 at 8:24 PM, Tom Zurinskas <truespel at hotmail.com> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender: Â  Â  Â  American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster: Â  Â  Â  Tom Zurinskas <truespel at HOTMAIL.COM>
> Subject: Â  Â  Â Re: pron. of just
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> These 5 words are from m-w.com. Â There is a schwa in each that the speaker pronounces as a different phoneme. Â That's at least 5 different sounds for one symbol. Â (because m-w.com uses special symbols, the schwa sign may not come out).
>
> her = \(h)ər, ˈhər\  I hear the ~er phoneme
> but = \ˈbət\       I hear the ~u phoneme
> local = \ˈlō-kəl\   I hear the ~oo phoneme
> flaccid  = \ˈfla-səd also ˈflak-səd\   I hear the ~i phoneme
> forehead =  \ˈfär-əd, ˈfȯr-; ˈfȯr-ˌhed also -ˌed\  I hear the ~e phoneme
>
> Note. Â I've never heard flaccid pronounced ~flaksid, nor forehead pronounced ~faared. Â Anyone else?
>
> Clearly schwa stands for many sounds.
>
> Tom Zurinskas, USA - CT20, TN3, NJ33, FL5+
> see truespel.com
>
>
>
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