[Lexicog] phonetics of "cool".

[R. Rankin]

> (by the way, has anyone else noticed that the phonetics of this has changed
> since the hippie days of the early 1970s? Then "cool" was with really
> rounded lips, now it's with virtually unrounded lips...)

This is the tense vowel laxing process that affects higher vowels before /l/
dialectally in US English.

/iy/  >  [I] so 'real' sounds like 'rill', 'steal' like 'still', etc.
/ey/ > [epsilon] so 'bail' sounds like 'bell', 'jail' like 'jell', etc.
/uw/ > [U] so 'pool' sounds like 'pull', 'fool' like 'full', etc.

It may affect /ow/ for some, but I have heard no examples.  This laxing before
/l/ was especially current in my undergrad students back in the mid-90's.  I
thought it had caught on pretty much everywhere, but the younger students now
seem to be losing it.

I've never seen any experimental studies that might show whether /iy/ and /I/
and the other pairs really collapsed together or not, but for my 65 year old
ears they were the same.

Bob Rankin
Univ. of Kansas



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