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

On Sat, 19 Jul 2003, Nik Taylor wrote:

> 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.
When John was saying it was pronounced /meiri/, I don't think he meant it
was pronounced [meiri] so much as the sound used (which I've never heard
as [ei]) is an allophone of /ei/. To my Australian ear and based mostly on
tv but a bit on RL, it sounds more like something that should be an
allophone of /E/, but this is an outsider's view so it's probably wrong.

> > 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&@/
It occurs to me that <eah> would probably be the way an American would
spell [E@] (e.g. when writing how a Brit says 'bear'), but I dunno. Until
John made that comment I'd always looked at it as <ea>+<h> rather than
<e>+<ah>, though I guess either analysis could be what I suggest. At any
rate, it's incredibly unlikely that a word would be spelt based on the
pronunciation of another dialect. So in short, yes, it's an incredibly odd
spelling.

(On a related note, when chatting to other Australians/on Australian
forums etc., people sometimes write <yer>, which I presume to be standing
for 'yeah' because I've never heard /j2:/. The Macquarie Dictionary
lists <yair> as an alternative spelling for 'yeah', but I've never seen
it. Is <yer> seen elsewhere?)

--
Tristan                  <kesuari@...>

Yesterday I was a dog. Today I'm a dog. Tomorrow I'll probably still
be a dog. Sigh! There's so little hope for advancement.
                -- Snoopy