Theiling Online    Sitemap    Conlang Mailing List HQ   

Re: OT: YAEPT: English low vowels (was briefly: Re: Y/N variants (< OT: English a...

From:ROGER MILLS <rfmilly@...>
Date:Friday, December 14, 2007, 5:45
Tristan wrote:
>ROGER MILLS wrote: > > >> Really? The vowel referred to by the PALM lexical set is also the vowel > >> in fAther. > > > > Is that also the vowel of LOT? it would be for me. > >You ask me essentially the same question I asked. PALM (which includes >fAther) is a different lexical set from LOT, so for some people >(including me) PALM/fAther is different from LOT.
Aha. Apparently the vowel is somewhere around [Q] in PALM/FATHER? I have heard that in the US (upper East Coast Boston/NYC/Phila area, upper class IME); and yes, it's not the vowel of LOT (although U-Bostonian has something close to a short [O] in that set; it sounds definitely un-American to us provincials, or maybe I just knew a lot of Anglophilic Bostonians). (And it's been a while since I reviewed the Wells list.) I hope my later post (using Mark Reed's list) clarifies things a bit better. In the past I've gone to, and wondered at, the various hear-it-now IPA sites; almost all have a frontish [a] that IS NOT what I learned in Phonetics 101. That sound doesn't exist in my lect, where /a/ is closer to [6] or [A] depending on the site. On reflection, I guess that [a] is what French has, but not what I use when trying to speak French-- which (surely among many other things) is perhaps why French people look askance and tend to answer back in English......) (snips)
>Eep! Not surprisingly for a YAEPT I get two contradictory answers to the >same question. Fortunately, I can read the implied "IMLs" and "IMEs" :) >
That's the fun of it, no?

Reply

T. A. McLeay <conlang@...>