[Ads-l] comparing US and UK accents for 25 words in truespel phonetics.

[Edward Aveyard]

Hi, Martin.  I was basing my comment from the Survey of English Dialects, which prioritised recording dialects that were at imminent risk of dying out, so its answers are unlikely to be representative of speech in England today.  There was a planned second phase of the Survey that would research contemporary speech in urban areas, but that fell victim to university budget cuts.

(I tried to convert this e-mail to HTML and past in two photographs of the results from the Survey of English Dialects, but I see that this is not allowed.)  

For "fifth", most answers across the north of England were fɪft.  I might have been extrapolating too readily from "fifth" to "sixth", as the combination of an f and then a θ can be a tongue-twister, so "fifth" might be more likely to have a final t than other ordinals.  There was no question for the realisation of "sixth" but answers for "eighth" were more likely to end in θ.

Going back a half-century earlier in linguistic history (1892), Joseph Wright (founder of the Yorkshire Dialect Society and editor of the English Dialect Dictionary, which inspired your Dictionary of American Regional English) transcribed all ordinals for his native dialect of Windhill, near Bradford, and they all ended in t rather than θ.  See page 113 here: https://archive.org/details/grammarofdialect00wrigrich/page/112/mode/2up

-----Original Message-----
From: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU> On Behalf Of Martin Purdy
Sent: 17 May 2021 20:49
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Re: comparing US and UK accents for 25 words in truespel phonetics.

"Siks" for "Sixth" in the UK?  I think the -th is pretty clear in most British accents/dialects, though there may be some where it still comes out as a -t.  Curious about where it drops out altogether.
I have a few problems with the examples as provided - there seems to be no account taken of the hundreds of potential "British" accents (and the many US variants, for that matter), and there's also no indication of which syllable is stressed in each case, so it's not really a handy guide to pronunciation.
The -aa- in the "UK" "Finnaaminin" also looks very American to me.  Most Brits would use an open o rather than an 'ah' in the second syllable.  And is the "oo" in "kumftibool" meant to represent a schwa? There isn't time to comb the whole list - those are just a few things that jumped out.

Martin NZ (ex Newcastle-upon-Tyne, UK)
 

    On Monday, May 17, 2021, 02:08:03 PM GMT+12, Tom Zurinskas <truespel at hotmail.com> wrote:  
 
 A truespel comparison of 25 hard-to-say words found that 20 of the 25 words were different between US and UK accents.  Only 13% of the phonemes were different, 68% of the difference was vowels.
https://emea01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fjustpaste.it%2F25words&data=04%7C01%7C%7Ccdb7d2788c8c49f0d7d708d9196cc4b6%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C637568777206624810%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C1000&sdata=W3FdI5knyv51%2F4Si9%2F47wX8DIxW1LgxZSAMvCE7dZ6Q%3D&reserved=0

Tom Zurinskas,  Originally from SW Conn 20 yrs,  college NE Tenn 3,  work SE NJ  33,  resides SE Florida 18...  truespel.com







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