Re: OT: Definitely Not YAEPT: English phoneme inventory?

John Cowan wrote:
> AFAIK, all Americans pronounce "Mary" as /meiri/; the question is whether
> they pronounce "merry" and "marry" as /meiri/ also.  For me they are
> /mEri/ and /m&ri/ respectively.
I have, for all three, something like /mIri/, but it's not actually
/I/.  It's the same vowe as in my pronunciation of "air".  I think it's
a more centralized version of /I/, but it's hard to tell.  In Florida, I
don't think I've ever heard /ei/.  I'm not sure how people say it here
in Kansas.  I'll have to listen for those words.

> As for "yeah", I've always thought it was a peculiar and perverse
> spelling for the word /jV/.
/jV/?  I don't think I've ever heard it with /V/.  I hear it as /j&/ or
sometimes with an offglide as something like /j&@/

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