Teenglish from England
David A. Daniel
dad at POKERWIZ.COM
Thu Sep 17 16:55:03 UTC 2009
I neither pronounce English with ee nor am I misguided. I, and every
standard native speaker I have ever heard, say English as if it were spelled
inglish or ing-glish, one or the other. I just listened to the m-w
pronunciations and those were inglish/ing-glish too. Folks who think they/we
say ee in standard US English are misguided. Or is this what the posts below
are saying and I have read it wrong? (Because I can't actually believe that
anyone really thinks the pronunciation is ee.)
DAD
____________________________________________
We've got a long way to go and a short time to get there
-----Original Message-----
From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf Of
Laurence Horn
Sent: Thursday, September 17, 2009 12:52 PM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Re: Teenglish from England
At 10:30 AM -0500 9/17/09, Scot LaFaive wrote:
> >
>> 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.
>
>
>Am I getting this right? Is the argument that the first vowel of "English"
>is pronounced the same as the vowel in "teen" in Standard English?
>
>Scot
Yup, and more fully (in Tom's argument, not Wilson's) that those of
us who are convinced that we don't pronounce it that way are
misguided.
LH
>
>On Thu, Sep 17, 2009 at 10:22 AM, Herb Stahlke <hfwstahlke at gmail.com>
wrote:
>
>>
>>--------------------------------------------------------------------------
-----
>>
>> 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:
>> > 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
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >>
>> 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:
>> >>
>> >> 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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