Re: YAEPT: apparently bizarre 'A's (was Re: YEAPT: f/T (was Re: Other Vulgar Lat

--- In conlang@yahoogroups.com, "Mark J. Reed" <markjreed@...> wrote:

>Thus, "harT" represents /hA:T/ in AusE and /ha`r\T/ or thereabouts
in >GenAmE.

>> For me they are: /ha3T/, /h3d/, /3T/, /sta3/, and /v3s/; but then
>>I'm an American :-)
>A non-rhotic American, apparently.  Where are you from more
>specifically?
It has been my experience that, for many Americans, the
question "where are you from" is not a good indicator of accent.
Many of us have been very mobile in our lives.

I was born in southern California of parents from New Jersey.
Neither of them had an accent distinguishable as being from some
particular place.  When I was seven years old we moved to Tidewater
Virgina, a place with a definite regional accent, which I never
acquired.  Fifteen years ago I moved to Virginian Appalachia,
another area with a definite regional accent.

I checked out Wikipedia's article "General American" and have come
to the conclusion that I speak General American.  I have the speech
patterns described in the article with the exception that I do not
make the wine/whine merger, but that is a learned response on my
part.

If my [r] is /3/, doesn't that make me a rhotic American?  My [r] is
still there. I am under the impression that non-rhotic means no
sound where there is an [r], as in /hA:t/.  If the pronunciation
is /hA:rt/ or /hA:3t/ or /hA:4t/ or even /hA:Rt/, then the speaker
is rhotic.

I realize, in investigating this, that I don't see a difference
between /r/ and /3/.  Do I assume correctly that /r/ is consonantal
<red> and /3/ is vocalic <nurse>.

And I've long wondered how [r] has come to be the grapheme for such
variant phonemes as /r(or 4)/, /3/, /r\/, and /R/.

Charlie
http://wiki.frath.net/user:caeruleancentaur

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