tabbed

[John Dunn]

I think it is fair to say that in most varieties of British English the vowel in 'tabbed' is now a back vowel [a].  The pronunciation with a fronted or even a front vowel, though often imposed on learners of the language,*  now survives only in the speech of those ladies of Morningside^ who believe that 'sex' refers to the containers in which coal is normally carried.  Though I am no expert in English phonetics, it occurs to me that the rather awkward final consonant cluster will probably undergo some modification in rapid speech, depending on the exact nature of the following segment.

John Dunn.

* A parallel instance of an obsolescent or even obsolete norm being imposed on learners of a language can be found in the fact that until about 10-15 years ago all British text-books of Russian recommended the pronunciation [shch'] for the sound indicated by the 27th letter of the Russian alphabet.

^ A posh suburb of Edinburgh.  For some reason the pronunciation with the front vowel has proved (or is perceived to have proved) particularly tenacious among middle and upper-middle-class women in the Scottish Central Belt. 

-----Original Message-----
From: "Paul B. Gallagher" <paulbg at PBG-TRANSLATIONS.COM>
To: SEELANGS at LISTSERV.CUNY.EDU
Date: Wed, 2 Feb 2005 09:16:24 -0500
Subject: Re: [SEELANGS] Problems Switching between Russian and English Fonts in Windows X P

Vladimir Benko wrote:

> (BTW, could you you please suggest what is the pronunciation for 
> "tabbed"?)

Select Unicode (UTF-8) encoding to view this message if your email 
program has not already done so.

In principle, it should be /tæbd/, but most Americans will have a 
diphthong whose onset is in the [ɛ] to [ɪ] region ([ɛ] as in "bed," [ɪ] 
as in "bid") and whose offset is close to schwa, thus: [tɛəbd] ~ 
[tɪəbd]. I myself have [tɛəbd], and [tæbd] strikes me as stilted, though 
I would still understand it.

.......

Paul B. Gallagher
pbg translations, inc.
"Russian Translations That Read Like Originals"
http://pbg-translations.com

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John Dunn
SMLC (Slavonic Studies)
University of Glasgow
Hetheringon Building
Bute Gardens
Glasgow G12 8RS
U.K.

Tel.: +44 (0)141 330 5591
Fax: +44 (0)141 330 2297
e-mail: J.Dunn at slavonic.arts.gla.ac.uk

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