USAGE: [YAEPT] (was Re: "To whom")

Maxime: you are starting what we call "YAEPT": Yet Another English
Pronunciation Thread.  The pronunciation of English varies dramatically
over the English-speaking world, especially the vowels, and we have had
many discussions on the topic.  To me, these are interesting; to many
others, they are not.  In any case, once you venture into YAEPT
territory, you should mark the subject appropriately, as I have done
here.

First: "could of" is a pronunciation spelling.  The phrase "could have"
is usually shortened to "could've" which is pronounced something like
/'kUd@v/.  There is not much, if any, difference between /@/ and /V/
in many English dialects, other than the former being unstressed,
therefore /'kUd@v/ sounds a lot like /'kUdVv/ = "could of".  People
often write what they hear without analyzing it, and so write "could of"
instead of "could've" or "could have".

> In my X-Sampa description, it says that /4/ is pronounced as
>
> "r in Spanish pero, tt American English better"
Yup.

> But when I learned spanish, my teacher (wich were from Mexico) pronounced
> "pero" as /pEGo/ with a "e" between /e/ and /E/
I find that very odd.  I would expect /peGo/ to be the pronunciation of
a word spelled "pego" in Spanish; the sound [G] is the usual value of
the letter |g| between vowels. I've never heard it as a pronunciation of
the Spanish |r|.

Normally, Spanish |r| is pronounced [4].  This as a quick flap  of the
tongue against the roof of the mouth.  That's is distinct from |rr| = [r],
which is a trill (the same flap repeated many times very rapidly).

The English word "better" is generally pronounced /'bEd.r\=/ in the
United States and /'bE?.@/ in the United Kingdom.  But in the US, one of
the allophones of /d/ is [4].  Which can be confusing because in the UK,
[4] is an allophone of /r/ instead.  Which is why US writers often
write stereotypical British-accented dialogue with words like "Veddy" (=
"Very").

> How do you pronounce the word "cache"? He pronounces /k&_cSe­"/ but I'd
> probably pronounce it /k6"tS@/
IMD the word "cache" sounds just like the word "cash": /k&S/.  I've
never heard it pronounced with /tS)/.  (In English, the sequence |ch| is
*usually* /tS)/, but it is quite often /S/, usually in French
borrowings, or borrowings from other languages misconstrued as French).
I've also never heard anyone pronounce the -e, so the fact that several
others report doing so is interesting.

-Marcos

Reply