Re: USAGE: English vowel transcription [Re: Droppin' D's Revisited]

Adrian Morgan wrote:
>> Anyway ... so /that's/ what you mean by long/short vowels! It would
>> never have occurred to me to suspect that the term 'long vowel' would
>> refer to a diphthong, except in a casual non-technical discussion
>> where anything could mean anything.
>>
>> True; it makes linguists' toes curl to  hear that. But 1st and  2nd
>> grade classrooms probably aren't the place for 'technical' discussion.
>
>They are, however, the place to teach meanings of words. I know people
>sometimes *use* long/short in that casual way, but I didn't know there
>existed schools that actually *taught* them to do so!>
        Well, it was not a totally conventional school-- run as an adjunct
to teacher-training by a small local college, as I think I mentioned before.
Whatever their system (or the system in general use 60 or so years ago) it
seemed to work-- most of us learned to read and spell without major trauma.


>
>OK, brief overview of Australian dialectal variation.
>
>We have both social dialects and regional dialects. (snip)
>As for regional dialects, I've seen books written in Sydney that deny
>these exist, whereas anything written in, say, Adelaide (my city) will
>assert that they do. This shouldn't surprise anyone - Sydney is a major
>population centre and therefore has less need to emphasise an identity
>distinct from Australia in general >
        It may amuse you to know that Mr. Hughes, born & bred in Sydney,
seemed to imply that Adelaide is a stronghold of hoity-toity
Britishism.......

>Does this help you to interpret what you've heard?
        Yes, and thank you.