Return of the minimal pairs

[Larry Trask]

--On Wednesday, May 23, 2001 2:30 pm +0100 Max Wheeler
<maxw at cogs.susx.ac.uk> wrote:

> And if you allow proper names (and whyever not?) it isn't even true that
> [eng] and [h] are in complementary distribution, since both occur between
> unstressed vowels in e.g. Birmingham, Callaghan, Houlihan, Monaghan.

A very interesting point.  The pronunciation described, with /h/ followed
by schwa, is general in the educated speech of England, and perhaps of
Britain.  But it's impossible in my American accent.  I have to follow the
/h/ with a stressed vowel (ash) in every case when I'm speaking in my
native English.  Just recall Dirty Harry.  After 31 years in England, I
have somewhat uncomfortably picked up the British pronunciations, but
(except in 'Birmingham', in which I simply have no /h/), I always feel as
though I'm pronouncing a foreign name, much as when I pronounce 'Goethe' in
English with my best German accent.

I've just checked the pronunciations of a couple more of these troublesome
Irish names in John Wells's pronouncing dictionary.  For 'Docherty', Wells
gives the pronunciation with [x] (a velar fricative) as usual in Britain,
and the pronunciation with /k/ as usual in the US and not uncommon in
Britain, but he doesn't recognize a variant with /h/, even though I'm
pretty sure I've heard this on occasion.  I use [x], just as I do in
'Bach'.  For 'Haughey', Wells gives /h/ as usual in Britain, /k/ as usual
in the US.  Since I never encountered this name before coming to Britain, I
have no good intuitions about how I would have pronounced it before leaving
my beloved homeland, but I now use [x] again, even if nobody else does.

In my vernacular, even in proper names, I absolutely can't have /h/ before
schwa or before unstressed /I/.  I might also point out that, in the US,
the word 'vehicle' is a traditional shibboleth for spotting country
bumpkins: if you pronounce an /h/ in 'vehicle', you're a bumpkin.  Even the
folk singer Arlo Guthrie, hardly the personification of cosmopolitan
sophistication, used this word to great effect on one of his records to
identify a southern policeman as a bumpkin.  But this pronunciation
nevertheless forces the presence of a stress on the second syllable, and
/h/-schwa is still impossible.

Incidentally, I've just noticed that John Wells reports that 33% of his
American panel preferred the pronunciation of 'vehicle' with /h/, and a
further five percent actually put the main stress on the second syllable.
Sheesh.  Either John is using a remarkably catholic panel, or something has
happened here since I left home.  Do any of you Yanks out there *really*
pronounce an /h/ in 'vehicle'?

Larry Trask
COGS
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
UK

larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk

Tel: (01273)-678693 (from UK); +44-1273-678693 (from abroad)
Fax: (01273)-671320 (from UK); +44-1273-671320 (from abroad)