Teenglish from England

Fri Sep 18 06:17:37 UTC 2009

Thanks Nathan.  You say.

Putting these two facts together: [I] before [N] (which is of courseboth nasal and velar) effectively sounds like it is pronounced bothhigher and fronter than it actually is.

--I've gone over that as well for the letter "i" in "ing".  But here we are talking about the letter "e" in "England", and I say the word is pronounced with a long e (as in teen) not short i (as in tin).  The strange thing is that you say that short i (I) sounds like long e (i) before NG, but that is the important thing!  It's not (I) if it sounds like (i), it's (i).

You say:
Since [i] is the only Englishvowel that is higher and fronter than [I], [i] is the vowel manypeople will hear when [I] sounds higher and fronter (such as when it is pronounced before [N]). The next thing that can happen is that some speakers who hear [i] in this environment will actually produce [i] rather than [I], to mimicwhat they think they hear other people saying. So the end result is that some people say [IN], some people say [iN],and many people hear both as [iN].

--Isn't what we all are doing "mimicking what we think we hear?"  This means it IS what we hear, and what we hear is the reality in the auditory world, not what we see.  We see the letters "i" or " e" and they stand for several sounds in Engish.  But it should be obvious that "e" in the world "English" or "England" is long e ~ee (i).  Saying that it's a short i but sounds like a long e does not make sense.

I'm not talking individual accents.  I'm talking m-w.com or thefreedictionary.com.

Tom Zurinskas, USA - CT20, TN3, NJ33, FL7+
see truespel.com phonetic spelling

----------------------------------------
> Date: Thu, 17 Sep 2009 16:07:43 -0400
> From: Nathan.Sanders at WILLIAMS.EDU
> Subject: Re: Teenglish from England
> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender: American Dialect Society
> Poster: Nathan Sanders
> Subject: Re: Teenglish from England
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On Sep 17, 2009, at 1:13 PM, Laurence Horn wrote:
>
>> It's clear that some believe this, and they may be right for their
>> own speech. It is certainly not my impression that raised/tensed [i]
>> is the usual (or even that common a) pronunciation for U.S. speakers,
>> but unlike some of the "Eenglish" contingent, I am not saying that
>> they're necessarily misguided about their *own* pronunciation. What
>> rubs me the wrong way is when I'm told *I* pronounce it "Eenglish" or
>> "seeng" and just don't admit it. But we've been down that road many
>> times, and the odds that minds will be changed on this are roughly as
>> steep as the odds that the health care debate in Congress will.
>
> It's a shame that TZ hasn't taken a phonetics course, because if he
> had, he might very well have learned why [I] sounds like [i] before
> [N], or at least learned enough to piece it together on his own.
>
> For the benefit of those who do actually care to learn why this is
> true, I'll explain:
>
> The two loudest, most perceptually important resonant frequencies
> (vowel formants) that result from a mouth shape for [I] are
> approximately F1 = 400 Hz and F2 = 1900 Hz (the actual values for a
> given individual will depend on the size of their vocal tract).
>
> Before nasal sounds, vowels in English are often at least partially
> nasalized due to anticipatory articulation, as the velum is
> prematurely lowered in preparation for the following nasal. Nasalized
> vowels have a very low, extra formant in the 200-300 Hz range due to
> the additional resonance of the vowel's sound wave as it travels from
> the glottis up into the nasal cavity.
>
> Note that the ordinary F1 value for a plain oral [I] is 400 Hz, which
> is very close to the nasal formant value, so close in fact, that
> listeners may hear only a single formant rather than two distinct
> formants when [I] is nasalized. When this happens, the perceptual
> result is some weighted combination of the nasal formant and F1, which
> causes us to perceive a nasalized [I] as having a lower F1 value than
> for a plain oral [I].
>
> Since F1 is an acoustic correlate of vowel height and a lower F1 value
> corresponds to a higher vowel articulation, a nasalized [I] (which is
> found before a nasal) effectively sounds like it is pronounced
> slightly higher than it actually is.
>
> Furthermore, a following velar sound causes what is known as a "velar
> pinch", in which F2 and F3 values approach each other (i.e., F2
> increases while F3 decreases). Since F2 is an acoustic correlate of
> frontness/backness in vowels and a higher F2 value corresponds to a
> fronter articulation, [I] before a velar effectively sounds like it is
> pronounced slightly fronter than it actually is.
>
> Putting these two facts together: [I] before [N] (which is of course
> both nasal and velar) effectively sounds like it is pronounced both
> higher and fronter than it actually is. Since [i] is the only English
> vowel that is higher and fronter than [I], [i] is the vowel many
> people will hear when [I] sounds higher and fronter (such as when it
> is pronounced before [N]).
>
> The next thing that can happen is that some speakers who hear [i] in
> this environment will actually produce [i] rather than [I], to mimic
> what they think they hear other people saying.
>
> So the end result is that some people say [IN], some people say [iN],
> and many people hear both as [iN].
>
> Nathan
>
> --
> Nathan Sanders
> Linguistics Program
> Williams College
> http://wso.williams.edu/~nsanders/
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
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