Re: Part 2 Why my con langs SUCK!!!

On Thu, 22 Jan 2004, Mark J. Reed wrote:

> On Thu, Jan 22, 2004 at 05:59:43PM +0000, Joe wrote:
> > The same with /U/ vs /V/ - which, though widespread, is not
> > represented in written English.
>
> It most certainly is.  /pUt/ and /pVt/ are spelled differently, as are
> /lUk/ and /lVk/, /bUk/ and /bVk/ . . . I can't think of any /U/ vs /V/
> minimal pairs in English which are homographs.
Yeah, but the idea he was trying to get across was that there are times
when short <u> is /U/ and times when it's /V/. Similarlry with <oo> and
/U/ and /u/.

> > Perhaps we should use cool dutch-style double letters.  'graas'(grass)
> > and 'puut'(put), for instance.
>
> Is <grass> [grA:s] in your dialect, then, or are you proposing <aa> for
> [&]?  Doubled vowels for a shorter sound is a bit odd.
I've spoken of this thrice in two days, though always being detailed when
talking about 'cot' and 'caught'.

Before s, st, f, ft and sometimes nt/ns, short a is pronounced /A:/ (/a:/
etc.) in some non-rhotic dialects decended from the speech of SE England.
Mine included. The change isn't perfect even in monosyllables, e.g. pass
/pa:s/ vs mass /m&s/, and the before nt/ns rule has been has mostly been
backed out in at least AuE (leaving aunt and can't behind). Not to mention
that there are words which can be pronounced either way in Australia, like
'castle' as /k&s@l/ vs /ka:s@l/* or 'graph' as /gr&f/ vs /gra:f/ (I oddly
use /gra:f/ a lot when it's a suffix, but only ever /gr&f/ as the full
word), but these are by far the minority of cases. Because of this,
'ass'='arse' could be spelt <aas> and it makes everyone apart from rhotic
British people happy, because Americans would be reading most <aa> as /&/
anyway.

* An Australian film called _The Castle_ is pronounced with /a:/ by many
who normally say /&/, because that's how it's said in the film.

--
Tristan