LL-L "Phonology" 2005.05.07 (08) [D/E]

Tue Jun 7 23:19:01 UTC 2005

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From: Críostóir Ó Ciardha <paada_please at yahoo.co.uk>
Subject: LL-L "Phonology" 2005.05.07 (06) [E]

David Barrow wrote:
"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."

I have extreme difficulty hearing the actual sounds I pronounce. Sometimes I
hear this slight dipthongal quality, but I am not sure how much of what I
hear is actually the rise and fall in tone on the vowel. In the sequence

pit put pat pot pet pate peat pote

I hear monothongs [i] [u] [ae] on the first three and dipthongs on the rest.
The fourth and fifth examples in particular sound like they have strong
schwa glides (although _pet_ sounds like it might be have an [i] glide
instead of a schwa glide). Then again I also hear very strong semi-vowel
glides in the last four cases, so I may be saying what amounts to a
tripthong. Not sure. It sounds like

pate ['p at ejt] peat ['p at i:jt] pote ['p at o:w at t]

As I explained, I have considerable difficulty recognising the phonemes I
pronounce.

Ron wrote:
"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."

Yes, this sounds absolutely right. Once or twice in both Australia and
Ireland mimickers have pointed out that my lips are much more active when I
speak, especially around [y] and [u] than they are used to. (It works both
ways: I notice Australians rarely use their top lips when they speak.)

"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."

This is an exceptionally cogent point, Ron. Married to an Australian, I can
(and frequently do) do a perfect Australian accent, to the point that I can
trick Australians into thinking I am dinky-di. (I use this power wisely and
only for good, naturally, and always confess my true accent quickly.) I have
noticed there is a complete lack of monopthongs and that vowels consequently
tend to be longer. This vowel lengthening is why it is easier to imitate an
ocker Australian accent, with its habitual dipthongisation and
tripthongisation, than a standard Australian accent which has softer
dipthongisation. It is also hard to maintain a standard Australian accent
without slipping, by force of vowel length, into ocker.

My wife would be interested in this thread as she is terrified that she is
losing her Australian accent after three years in Ireland. Her natural
accent is standard Australian though my mother-in-law speaks with an ocker
rural West Australian one. Most often my wife says she is mistaken for an
English accent (how I do not know). I now realise that my wife is probably
dropping back on her dipthongisation under the influence of myself (I think
my basic unlengthened vowels [i] [e] and [a] are probably very pure,
although slightly nasal) and the Derry accent, which also has fairly flat
vowels and some nasalisation.

(Interestingly, one of our friends from Queensland who also lived in Derry
ended up sounding almost American because of what must have been a cutting
back on dipthongisation and the conscious pronunciation of [r] in words like
_car_ and _park_.)

Curiously, Australians in Derry are often mistaken for Americans, although
why phonemically speaking I do not know.

Go raibh maith agaibh,

Criostóir.

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From: Travis Bemann <tabemann at gmail.com>
Subject: LL-L "Phonology" 2005.05.07 (04) [E]

> From: Gary Taylor <gary_taylor_98 at yahoo.com>
> 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:] (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.

It could be simply that speakers could be effectively regarding vowel
frontness versus backness to be irrelevant in this case, and
interpreting all tense high front vowels as being effectively the same
phonemically.

For the record, I really do not think that one can make
across-the-board statements about phonological change in English
dialects today, for the simple reason that they have become
sufficiently distanced from each other, both geographically and
socially, that change in some dialect groups may easily not touch
other dialect groups.  Case in point, within North American English,
two different chain-shifts which are going on today are the Northern
Cities Shift and the California Vowel Shift.

Both affect low and middle vowels, but they happen to be going in
opposite directions, with the Northern Cities Shift backing /E/,
raising /{/, fronting /A/, lowering /O/, and backing /@/, while the
California Vowel Shift does practically exactly the complete opposite
of such.  Both are substantial vowel system changes, and happen to be
affecting two different branches of the same major dialect group
separately.  As long as we're on the subject of California English,
there is significant fronting of /u/ in such, to the point of such
becoming  /M/, whereas /u/ appears to be preserved in the English
dialects where the NCS is occurring.  And mind you all of this is
occurring just within North American English, and not even within some
of the more divergent dialects of such, such as AAVE, so if one cannot
make blanket statements about such things just about NAE, how can one
make blanket statements about English as a whole?

(By the way, all transcriptions above have been using X-SAMPA.)

----------

From: Ingmar Roerdinkholder <ingmar.roerdinkholder at WORLDONLINE.NL>
Subject: LL-L "Phonology" 2005.05.07 (06) [E]

Ik heb een vraag - die ik bijna niet durf te stellen - want het gaat weer
eens over de Duitse taal.
In dit geval: hoe worden de korte klinkers en <ü> in het Duits nu
eigenlijk precies uitgesproken?

En is er verschil tussen deze uitspraak in Noord-Duitsland, waar men van
oorsprong Nedersaksisch spreekt, en andere delen van Duitsland?
Nederlanders zullen bijna altijd de Duitse =[i] en <ü>=[y] horen en
gebruiken, hoewel in het Nederlands in dezelfde woorden =[I] en =[Y].

In het NL wordt [i] als <ie> geschreven, en [y] als <uu>, dit zijn dus
geen lange klinkers! <zit>=[zIt] <ziet>=[zit], <fut>=[fYt], <fuut>=[fyt].
Alleen voor <r> zijn <ie> en <uu> lang: <bier>=[bi:r], <duur>=[dy:r].

In België hoort men overigens soms een andere uitspraak, gelijk aan het
Duits,waar <ie> en <uu> (en <oe>) altijd lang zijn, en =[i] en =[y].

Maar een Nederlander die Duits leert, zegt nooit <ich bin>[Iç bIn] maar
altijd [ix bin], niet <glücklich> ["glYklIç] maar ["glyklix] enz.

Toch meen ik bijvoorbeeld in Duitse films en TV-series heel vaak wèl
[I] en [Y] in plaats van [i] en [y] te horen.

Duitsers, ex-Duitsers en would be Duitsers: hoe zit dat nu?

Summary:
I am asking how the short vowels and <ü> are pronounced in German,
[I] and [Y] as in Dutch, or [i] and [y].
Btw: Dutch short is the same as in English, namely [I], but German
short sounds as [i] in Dutch ears, and German short <ü> as [y].

So: Germans, ex Germans and would be Germans: what's the right way?

Ingmar ["INmar]

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From: Ben J. Bloomgren <godsquad at cox.net>
Subject: LL-L "Phonology" 2005.05.07 (06) [E]

Does anyone pronounce u as oo anymore anyway? Everyone here in my generation
and in my part of the country says it as eeoo now. Deeoo yeeoo wanna gayo
teeoo the meeoovieas with meea? Yes, that's an exageration, but it is not so
far off.
Ben

----------

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

Críostóir:

> I have extreme difficulty hearing the actual sounds I pronounce.

I think this is common, just as common as seeing yourself differently in
mirrors and pictures than other people see you.  It often takes someone else
to evaluate one's speech.  I find it useful to listen to a sound recording
of myself and then play it back in small chunks, preferable slightly slowed
down.

> Yes, this sounds absolutely right. Once or twice in both Australia and
> Ireland
> mimickers have pointed out that my lips are much more active when I speak,
> especially around [y] and [u] than they are used to. (It works both ways:
> I
> notice Australians rarely use their top lips when they speak.)

I agree about your observation of the "stiff" upper lip in Australian
speech.  This was my (American) wife's first observation when she arrived in
Australia.  I observed that in most speakers it isn't a case of a slack
(relaxed inactive) upper lip but indeed a case of a "stiff" upper lip, a
fairly tense one.   If you assume that position you'll find that it is a
good initial, general aid in imitating Australian pronunciation.

I think that lip movement is an underemphasized aspect in linguistics.  Sure
enough, it is described in phonetics, but mostly limited to lip positions of
individual sounds.  General tendencies may be considered not scientific
enough, perhaps because this would easily lead to oversimplification.  I do
know that it is not infrequently taught in dialect courses as a part of
actors' training.

I supposedly "found the key" to Japanese pronunciation when I fully realized
that you should move your lips as little as possible, and that in the case
of Chinese varieties the opposite applies, that showing ones teeth seems to
be a vice in the former and a virtue in the latter.  Sure I'm
oversimplifying this, but there is a grain of truth to it.

Incidentally, I find that lip and jaw tensing in many speakers of Southern
England dialects and also of Australian and New Zealand dialects tends to be
similar to many Coastal Low Saxon speakers, and I wonder if this accounts
for /ou/ and /ar/ being pronounced virtually the same in all of the above,
as [eU] and [a:] respectively -- well, generally speaking.  (E.g., "toe" =
_tou_ 'too' [t_heU], "mark" = _mark_ [ma:k] 'mark'.   In Dutch the spelling
_teü_ and _maak_ would produce similar sounds.)

Interesting the thing about the two American vowel shifts there, Travis!  It
helps me analyze Californian pronunciations, whose details sometimes still
elude me.

You wrote:

> As long as we're on the subject of California English,
> there is significant fronting of /u/ in such, to the point of such
> becoming  /M/, whereas /u/ appears to be preserved in the English
> dialects where the NCS is occurring.

But isn't [M] (IPA upside-down m) the unrounded equivalent of [u], thus as
much back as [u]?

Ingmar (baven):

> En is er verschil tussen deze uitspraak in Noord-Duitsland, waar men van
> oorsprong Nedersaksisch spreekt, en andere delen van Duitsland?
> Nederlanders zullen bijna altijd de Duitse <i>=[i] en <ü>=[y] horen en
> gebruiken, hoewel in het Nederlands in dezelfde woorden <i>=[I] en
> <u>=[Y].

In the (meyrsten) Nourd-Sassischen dialekten is de uutspraak vun düsse
fonemen meyr or min de sülvige as in't Duytsche, un daar wegen sünd sey ook
meyr or min de sülvigen in de Duytschen dialekten vun d'n nourden:

Eyn-luden (monophthongs):

Duytsch un Neddersassisch:
kort:
   /i/ -> [I]
   /ü/ -> [Y]
   /u/ -> [U]
   /e/ -> [E]
   /ö/ -> [œ]
   /o/ -> [O]
   /a/ -> [a]

lang:
   /ii/ [i:]
   /üü/ -> [y:]
   /uu/ -> [u:]
   /ee/ -> [e:] {1}
   /öö/ -> [ø:] {2}
   /oo/ -> [o:]
   /aa/ -> [A:] {3}

Neddersassisch:
   {1} /ee/ -> [e:] ~ [E:]
   {2} /öö/ -> [ø:] ~ [œ:]
   {3} /aa/ -> [Q:] ~ [o:]

Missingsch un "Ur-Nourdsch" Duytsch:
   {3} /aa/ -> [Q:] ~ [o:]

In Hamburg there are two dialect groups in Low Saxon and LS-substrata German
with regard to /ar/: northern [a:] ([ma:k]), southern [A:] ~ [Q:] (mA:k ~
[mQ:k]), roughly divided by the upper arm of the Elbe (Norderelbe), which
once was the border between Hamburg and the Principality of Hannover.
However, this division seems to be less clear now.

Is Dy dat 'n Hülp?

Kumpelmenten,
Reinhard/Ron

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