Re: Beijing, Zhongguo, etc.

On Mon, Aug 25, 2008 at 12:53, Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...> wrote:
> YAEPT alert!
>
> On Mon, Aug 25, 2008 at 4:31 AM, Eugene Oh <un.doing@...> wrote:
>> On Mon, Aug 25, 2008 at 1:28 AM, Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...> wrote:
>>>
>>> > /E/ does not occur before /n/
>>>
>>> It does in my 'lect; "hen", "pen", etc. have no diphthongalization...
>>>
>>> Where [E] can't occur for me is before /g/ or /N/.
>>
>> So what happens to words like "peg" or "length"?
>
> Diphthongalized in the direction of [ej].  The word "peg" rhymes with
> "Haig" for me in casual speech, although when speaking carefully I
> reduce it back to [E].
>
>> Additionally I don't understand Jim's comment about the prohibition of /E/
>> before /n/: "pen", "men", "glen", "fen", "when"...?
>
> In some dialects, appaently including Jim's, the above
> diphthongalization applies before /n/ as well.
My guess would, instead, have been a pen-pin merger: /E/ merging with
/I/ before /n/ rather than diphthongising. (And leading to
circumlocutions such as "ink p@n" and "stick p@n" to distinguish the
two.)

Cheers,
--
Philip Newton <philip.newton@...>

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