Re: Schwa and [V]: Learning the IPA

On 16/06/06, R A Brown <ray@...> wrote:
> Tristan Alexander McLeay wrote:
> > On 16/06/06, R A Brown <ray@...> wrote:
> >
> >> Larry Sulky wrote:
> >> > On 6/15/06, R A Brown <ray@...> wrote:
> [snip]
> >> > But I still think I disagree. If someone tells me that they'll [kVt]
> >> > something, I figure they'll use a  knife to do it. But if they say
> >> > they'll [k@t] something, I have no idea what they're talking about.
> >>
> >> Well, yes because you have [@] as a variant of /I/ in 'hobbit' - and
> >> possibly as an allophone of other unstressed vowels. I would understand
> >> [k@t] as 'curt'    :)
> >
> > Really, even when short?
>
> Yes - length is not phonemic in this neck of the woods.
I was of the impression that length and quality were concomitantly
phonemic (I think that means what I want it to mean) ... but would you
take [I:] as long as /i:/, or [i] as short as /I/ to be nothing more
than, respectively /I/ and /i:/?

> > I would take it as an odd/dialectal
> > pronunciation for "kit" or,
>
> Yeah - I was, I guess, thinking in more or less RP terms. This is the
> trouble with taking words isolation. In real life they don't come in
> isolation. IIRC the South African pronunciation of _kit_ is something
> like [k@t].
The pronunciation in New Zealand too.

> > perhaps "cut". (But using [3:] or [@:] or
> > something similar for /3:/, versus [2:]~[8:]~[@\:] strikes me as
> > obviously British.)
>
> I think the Scots would be a little surprised to think there such a
> thing as common British pronunciation     :)
I didn't say there was ... I just avoided being any more specific than
I could be. I could've said "English", but then those poor rhotic west
Midlanders(?) would've been unfairly included, and what of the
dialects which use [E:] (merged with /E@/), or [8:] or something? I
don't really know where every accent comes from so I was just broad.

[M:] in AusE etc.
>   To me, [M] is almost indistinguishable from the
> > completely different sound, /l=/! (I didn't believe it when I first
> > heard it---I was sure there must've been some mispronunciation---but
> > it's so!)
>
> Not the /l=/ I'm used to which is more like [o] or [7].
[o:] is the vowel I have in "caught", "board" etc.: It's clearly not
that. And when I pronounce this vowel, I can feel more tongue very
near the velum as you'd expect for a high back vowel. And if you just
change the liprounding, you get [u]. So I think it's pretty much so!
And likewise with [M\] (velar glide), which in coda position I find
hard to distinguish from coda /l/.

But if I intentionally "drop my l's" to sound Cockney or something, I
do use [o] or the like---I never realised me and other
Melburnians/Australians must do it on such a frequent basis already!

> > Are you sure this woman wasn't just being lazy, making some
> > sort of an antipodal grunt that was intended to be interpreted as
> > "who?"?
>
> It's possible, as she didn't bother with aspirate either. But I'm fairly
> certain somewhere in the archives some guy claimed to have heard [M]
> used somewhere in Oz. But it's a big country, and I don't know now which
> part she hailed from.
True, but generally regarded as homogenous in pronunciation.

--
Tristan.

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