[Lexicog] Digest Number 415

[Simon Wickham-Smith]

On 31 Aug 2005, at 20:56, lexicographylist at yahoogroups.com wrote:
> 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.

Thanks Patrick for this story.  I don't think though that it's quite  
so easy to dismiss this guy's claim out of hand.

I tried your experiment today and discovered that there is a  
difference between the pronunciation of "Finnish" and "finish" in the  
sentence you offer.  The former has more emphasis on the first  
syllable, which causes the /i/ to be slightly raised beyond the /i/  
in the latter.  Then I tried another sentence:  "To finish in the  
second half would cause the Finnish team grief".  Again a difference,  
though this time reversed (ie "finish" pronounced with raised /i/).   
Another test:  "To finish last would cause the Finnish team grief":   
no difference.  It seems to be in the prosodics that the words are  
sometimes pronounced differently.  And, of course, context is all.

(Finnish.  It's the absolute end!  Suomi.  Varmasti on loppu!)

Si
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