[Lexicog] Turkey

[Patrick Hanks]

In my idiolect, as a native speaker of RP (Received Pronunciation, Southern
British English), "sought" and "sort" are pronounced identically.  I am
non-rhotic.

The "r" in "sort"  adn "bird" is realized differently in different rhotic
accent of
English --- ranging from retroflex and vowel colour in general American to
strongly trilled /r/ in some Scottish accents.

Back in the severites I met a learned professor of English language who was
convinced he could hear a pronunciation difference between "finish" and
"Finnish" in RP. Neither I nor A.C. Gimson (who was present, and far better
qualified than me to make this judgement) could hear any difference in the
pronunciation of these two words in various contexts. He was unconvinced.
We wanted to get him into a speech lab and record him saying things like
"I think the Finnish team will finish in the top three", for further
analysis.

It's amazing what people can convince themselves that they hear.

Patrick



----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Kenneth C. Hill" <kennethchill at yahoo.com>
To: <lexicographylist at yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Wednesday, August 31, 2005 6:28 PM
Subject: RE: [Lexicog] Turkey


> I think part of what's going on here is the preception of a language in
> terms of its varieties. "Sort" and "sought" are slightly different somehow
> even for speakers who pronounce them both identically because of an
> awareness that for other speakers the two words are pronounced quite
> differently, i.e., with a postvocalic rhotic r in "sort" and no
> rhoticization in "sought", whether "sought" contains a postvocalic
> shwa-glide or not.
>
> As for Czech i/í and y/ý: According to my references, these letters
> represent the same vowel phonemes (/i/ and /i:/) but signal palatalization
> (before i, í) or lack of palatalization (before y, ý) of the preceding
> consonant. Since consonant palatalization is quite salient in Czech, the
> homophony of the vowels shouldn't be expected to be much of a source of
> verbal play.
>
> --Ken
>
> --- Nick Miller <nick.miller at czech-translation.com> wrote:
>
> > >>The problem with 'krutý' and 'krùtí' is simply that they are not
> > homophones by any means.
> >
> > Okay, you have puns, but I think you're overstating the difference in
> > sound
> > here. The 'ù' is just a long 'u' and the 'ý' and 'í' are practically
> > identical, which is why you yourselves can have problems knowing which
> > is
> > which. Homophones in English can have slight differences when you look
> > at
> > them in detail. When I consider 'sort', 'sought' the first is a little
> > longer.
> >
> > Nick Miller
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > ---
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