Re: vowel descriptions

Raymond A. Brown wrote:
> At 12:13 pm -0600 15/12/98, Nik Taylor wrote:
> >Right, that's what I was saying.  The point remains, however, that [@]
> >and [V] sound different to me, they are easily distinguishable, which is
> >peculiar,
>
> And also to me - I have not the slightest difficulty in pronouncing the
> sounds differently.  Infact, as was pointed out on the list a few months
> back, many English speakers do regularly make a distinction between the
> sound in 'furry'/'f@ri/ and 'curry' /'kVri/.  The two vowels are _not_ in
> complementary distribution in many varieties of English.
I am rather confused over schwa. To me, it sounds different in
different words. Also, I would say the -urr- in both 'furry' and
'curry' is a syllabic r.

> The so-called (and IMO wrongly called) "short" vowels /&/ /O/ /V/ do not
> normally occur in unstressed positions and give way to shwa.  It's my
> understanding that the phonemic status of [@] in English is somewhat
> controversial, and is one of those awkwark customers that delight those who
> do not subscribe whole-heartily to the phonemic theory.
I have heard words where at least /&/ in unstressed position is
definately /&/ and not /@/, as in 'raccoon' (one of my favorite
animals :D ) /r&'kun/. To me, /r@'kun/ sounds British. I am in the
Midwestern US.