2008/5/15 Tristan McLeay <conlang@...>:
> On 15/05/08 22:26:31, Benct Philip Jonsson wrote:
>
>>
>> Now that's pretty important a distinction in meaning to
>> place on
>> vowel length and a glottal stop! I guess in accents like
>> Tristan's
>> the distinction is between [kEn] and [kA:n], which is a bit more
>> audible for us poor bastards without a /?/ phoneme in our L1's!
> ...
>
> "Can't" spoken carefully in isolation /ka:nt/ differs from another word
> in Australian English purely by length. Said word has already caused
> the replacement of "Count" by "Earl" when it had a different form.
Oh that word! It also sounds like the Swedish word for "edge",
which I found out unpleasantly once. My dad was driving me in
my wheelchair, and I was supposed to warn out if we came up
against any obstacles. Being only ten y.o. I just yelled [kAnt]
when we drew near to the edge of a sidewalk. Unfortunately
we were in London...
> Also, the vowel is a central [a:].
I can't tell the difference between Aussie and Cockney if there
ain't pictures of deserts/rainy streets to go with them...
> The back vowel [A:] sounds very
> much like /O/ to me, no doubt a consequence of hearing American
> accents.
In my L1 [A] and [Q:] are allophones of a single phoneme,
so I can sympathize. I really need context to tell "form"
and "farm" apart in a BBC accent.
> In fact, after velars the /a:/ phoneme may be more front. And
> amongst girls, the /&/ vowel can be quite low, so I wouldn't trust [E]
> vs [A:] to always help.
>
> But I've never heard of anyone in Australia confusing the words, so :/
> Things that aren't clear in isolation often become much clearer in
> context.
Girl: I want to marry you!
Boy: No you /k*nt/!
Sorry! Couldn't help myself!
--
/ BP