Teenglish from England

[Herb Stahlke]

I recall being taught as a child that "English" started with a lax
/I/, as in "in".  This was to correct those who used a spelling
pronunciation with lax /E/ as in "en".  None of my teachers or fellow
SE Michiganders, at least that I knew at the time, used the tense
vowel /i/ as in "eve".  I am aware that some speakers do have the
tense vowel before /N/ and some don't.  I am one who does not.  Of
course, even for lax vowel speakers like me, the vowel is raised
slightly before a velar nasal.  This is allophonic and does not change
it to tense /i/ for those speakers.

Herb

On Wed, Sep 16, 2009 at 8:46 PM, Tom Zurinskas <truespel at hotmail.com> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Tom Zurinskas <truespel at HOTMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: Teenglish from England
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Good one Wilson.  And you try to tell the teacher that it's the way the teacher also says it too, yet he would not believe.
>
> When it comes to words like "English" which begin with letter "e" (so there's no visual letter "i" influence) and it's pronounced in talking dictionaries, surely we all can hear long e ~ee (as in teen) not short i,  (as in tin).  And yet dictionaries persist in showing the vowel as short i while the speaker audibly says long e.  Boogles my mind and has done so since learning reading in 2nd grade.
>
> Tom Zurinskas, USA - CT20, TN3, NJ33, FL7+
> see truespel.com phonetic spelling
>
>
>
>
>>
>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
>> Sender: American Dialect Society
>> Poster: Wilson Gray
>> Subject: Re: Teenglish from England
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> It's a tense [i] in some dialects. Or maybe only in some idiolects. I fough=
>> t
>> TZ's fight in Articulatory Phonetics 101 at Davis. The prof responded,
>> "Well, if that's the way *you* say it ..."
>> -Wilson
>>
>> On Wed, Sep 16, 2009 at 9:42 AM, Laurence Horn wrot=
>> e:
>>
>>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>>> -----------------------
>>> Sender: American Dialect Society
>>> Poster: Laurence Horn
>>> Subject: Re: Teenglish from England
>>>
>>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------=
>> ------
>>>
>>> At 11:03 AM +0000 9/16/09, Tom Zurinskas wrote:
>>>>New teenage words from England (perhaps not only England)
>>>>
>>>>
>>> http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1213626/Teenglish-From-Frape-Neek=
>> -words-used-teenagers-baffle-adults.html
>>>>
>>>>When I say the word "teenglish" my tongue goes alveolar (top front),
>>>>but for English it's velar (top back). Yet the vowel befor the "n"
>>>>is still long e, ~ee. ~teenglish ~Eenglish.
>>>>
>>>>Tom Zurinskas, USA - CT20, TN3, NJ33, FL7+
>>>>see truespel.com phonetic spelling
>>>>_________________________________________________________________
>>>
>>> and for me "Teenglish" (the variety of English associated with teens)
>>> differs from "Tinglish" (the variety of English that makes you
>>> tingle) in and only in the quality of the vowel before the nasal,
>>> which is additional evidence that the vowel in the latter case (or in
>>> "English", or "Singlish" [Singaporean English]) is a lax [I], not a
>>> tense [i]. (Of course I might also render the former with an
>>> alveolar consonant if I wanted to stress the morphological structure
>>> of "teen" + "English".)
>>>
>>> LH
>>>
>>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --=20
>> -Wilson
>> =96=96=96
>> All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"---a strange complaint to com=
>> e
>> from the mouths of people who have had to live.
>> =96Mark Twain
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
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