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Re: English |a|

From:Tristan McLeay <conlang@...>
Date:Sunday, January 16, 2005, 23:08
On 17 Jan 2005, at 2.42 am, Mark J. Reed wrote:

> TM> American English seems to have some sort of issue with short O vs > AW, > > Not sure what you mean by that. > > WARNING! YAEPT BEGINNING! > > I have four sounds in the range under discussion, best represented in > English fauxnetics by "ah", "aw", "or", "oh". Note that to my ear, > this sequences represents a linear progression in sound; "aw" is > between > "ah" and "or" etc. > > 1. "ah" This occurs in "father", "water", etc, but also in the words > marked in my dictionary as possessing of a "short o" sound: Bob, > cot, > dog, fog, got, etc. > > 2. "aw" This occurs at the end of words like "caw" and "law", and also > before "dark" L, as in "call", "fall", etc. > > 3. "or" This sound does include the rhotic, but the quality of the o > there, even without the r-coloring, never occurs in my 'lect without > the following 'r'. Example: "oratory". > > 4. "oh" This is the regular "long o" sound I have in "bone", "cope", > "dome", "go", etc. > > > That sets my context. Now what is the issue you find between "short o" > and "aw"?
In spite of Mach's guess, probably (3) mostly. If as you seem to imply you always have the same quality for a O before an R, then that's probably the cause of the issue, but it's not something terribly easy to quantify. (I have two values, short O or AW, depending on What Happens Next so 'oratory' and 'chloro-' is /'Or@tSri/ and /'klOrVu/, but 'chlorine' is /'klo:'r@in/.) And I thought Americans who distinguished O and AW pronounced Dog as DAWG, but that might be limited to *some* Americans. Also, 'water' oughta rhyme with 'oughta' ;) That's not to say Australian English isn't without its issues here, too; au really behaves for us like a single vowel, with length usually implied by following consonants, as with say I or O, and /O/ as its short value and /o:/ as its long value (I think, there's possibly exceptions to that, but it's the best synchronous explanation for things like 'Austria' /Ostri@/ and especially 'Aussie' /Ozi/, i.e. have short O's. Historically, of course, it's probably just the reverse of the lengthening O->O: that took place along with &->a:). -- Tristan.

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Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...>