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

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?

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