LL-L "Phonology" 2005.05.07 (06) [E]

Tue Jun 7 20:36:16 UTC 2005

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From: Mark Dreyer <mrdreyer at lantic.net>
Subject: LL-L "Phonology" 2005.05.07 (04) [E]

Dear Gary, Ron, Ingmar, Ed & the rest of the company:

Subject: Phonology

>  The problem is for English speakers that our /u:/
> phoneme is currently in the process of change. A very
> conservative pronunciation of /u:/ (as uttered by the
> Queen for example) is indeed [u:], however more modern
> varieties tend towards [y:]

Ermmm, does this discussion carry us into the matter of 'U' & 'non-U'
English?

Urs,
Mark

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From: David Barrow <davidab at telefonica.net.pe>
Subject: LL-L "Phonology" 2005.05.07 (04) [E]

> From: Gary Taylor <gary_taylor_98 at yahoo.com>
> Subject: Phonology
>
> Hi Ingmar, Ed and all
>
> Ingmar, you wrote:
>
> Yes, but how can anybody mistaken <ou> for [y] - since
> those sounds
> don't
> look alike at all - not even in Canadian?
>
> The problem is for English speakers that our /u:/
> phoneme is currently in the process of change. A very
> conservative pronunciation of /u:/ (as uttered by the
> Queen for example) is indeed [u:], however more modern
> varieties tend towards [y:] (except when it"s before
> an /l/ or /r/. This is the case in Britain anyway, and
> I think partly so in the US. This is exactly the same
> thing as happened to Dutch and French long u (also
> North Frisian, Swedish and Norwegian). So for an
> English person the pronunciations of [u:] and [y:] are
> both reinterpreted as the phoneme /u:/, thus the
> confusion. It's why we always have problems making the
> difference in Dutch and German between these two.
>
> And just a quick comment to Ed. It's been pointed out
> that there is a difference between /ou/ before a
> voiceless and /ou/ before a voiced consonant. I would
> tend to say that this is a neologism in Canadian
> English, and not a remnant of the former
> pronunciation, seeing as it doesn't appear as a
> left-over in any of the dialects in Britain, as far as
> I know.
>
> Gary
>
> http://hometown.aol.com/taylor16471/myhomepage/index.html
>
> ----------
>
> From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
> Subject: Phonology
>
> Lowlanders,
>
> I totally share Gary's take on this (above).  I just left my nose out of
> this thread because it's recurrent and to me somewhat tedious.
>
> It is easily overlooked that in most English dialects today the supposed
> [u:] has in most environments less lip rounding and is fronted to
> somewhere
> between central (IPA barred "u", SAMPA }, like long "u" in Norwegian,
> Swedish and Saxony German) and [y] (as in German _grün_ and Dutch
> _vuur_).
> This fact alone explains a lot about English speakers' perception and
> their
> problems in distinguing foreign /u/ and /ü/ and perhaps their faulty
> imitation of Canadian /au/ (which is a gross generalization, considering
> that there is a lot of dialectical variety within Canada).
>
> Regards,
> Reinhard/Ron

I might add that people's pronunciation of what are supposedly long
monophthongs sometimes comes out with a diphthongal  quality  /i:/ =
[Ii], [@i]  /u:/ =  [Uu]  so I can see where some might confuse them

David Barrow

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From: Críostóir Ó Ciardha <paada_please at yahoo.co.uk>
Subject: LL-L "Phonology" 2005.05.07 (04) [E]

Our Gary wrote:
"The problem is for English speakers that our /u:/ phoneme is currently in
the process of change. A very conservative pronunciation of /u:/ (as uttered
by the Queen for example) is indeed [u:], however more modern varieties tend
towards [y:] (except when it"s before an /l/ or /r/. This is the case in
Britain anyway..."

This is interesting. My perception of [y] is simply one of [u:] with rounded
lips, so I may have been mistaking the two phonemes all along. I have great
difficulty distinguishing between the many variations of /u/ and schwa as in
Nottingham English they pretty much all merge, with the exception of [y] /
[u:] (whichever of the two it actually is) which represents the long form.
For me, the following all share the same vowel:

put book luck foot

Pairs like luck / look, took / tuck are thus indistinguishable. As I have
some grounding in hobby linguistics I can just about hear a difference
between the vowel in puck / pug, but only in the sense that the latter
sounds more schwa-like. Whenever friends and family in Ireland or Australia
mimick my accent, they confound me by saying [by:k] for what to me is simply
[buq] 'book'. This is especially true of the way when they mimick a certain
swear word that rhymes here.

What IPA vowels am I actually pronouncing in these words? Help!

Go raibh maith agat,

Criostóir.

----------

From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
Subject: Phonology

Críostóir (above):

> This is interesting. My perception of [y] is simply one of [u:] with
> rounded lips,
> so I may have been mistaking the two phonemes all along.

Oh, I wouldn't go as far as all that.  You are right saying that [y] has
more lip rounding.  Gary said that /uu/ realizations in modern English
varieties "tend towards [y:]."  They are not identical to [y:], just
approaching it.  I should have been more explicit about my perception of the
usual realizations.  They are somewhere between central "u" and [y]
*semi-rounded ort unrounded*.

> put book luck foot
> What IPA vowels am I actually pronouncing in these words? Help!

I suspect you say [u], i.e., a short version of [u:], with considerable
rounding, and it is this degree of rounding that confuses then (given that
both [u:] and [U] have little rounding in most dialects).  They
misinterprete it on the basis on their own limited ranges, and I suspect
that the degree of rounding is the issue.  You pronounce it as back, and in
their imitation it becomes front and somewhat rounded.  Well, sonethin' like
that.

> I might add that people's pronunciation of what are supposedly long
> monophthongs sometimes comes out with a diphthongal  quality  /i:/ =
> [Ii], [@i]  /u:/ =  [Uu]  so I can see where some might confuse them

Good point!  I think this is particularly pronounced (no pun intended) in
English varieties of Southern England, Australia and New Zealand.  In fact,
I often think that many Australians' phonetic inventory has no monophthong
at all, although in their own perception the speakers themselves probably
believe they do.  I find it especially strong after labials; for instance,
"bee" [bIi] ~ [b at i].  What I find particularly interesting about this is
that we can be fairly certain that this is how /ii/ diphthongization began
in English, Scots, Dutch and German.

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

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