Re: YAEPT:Re: Phonological musings (was: Announcement: New auxlang "Choton")

On Tuesday, October 5, 2004, at 08:54 , Roger Mills wrote:

> Joe wrote:
>
>> Andreas Johansson wrote:
>>
>>> PS A similar oddity is his use of "were" as an example of Elvish 'e',
>>> which
>>> otherwise seem to be monophthongal - the RPoid English I learnt has [we@
>>> ]
>>> for
>>> "were". I suppose Tolkien's 'lect differed here; dialectal variation
>>> 'tween
>>> [we:] and [we@] is, of course, easily believable.
>
> Is Elvish "e" supposed to be [e] or [E]? (Or both, depending...?)
I am certain the problem is a typo in Andreas' original message. It is
surely "where", not "were" that JJRT wrote.

In the pronunciation I grew up with in SE England, it is [wE:] which could
be analyzed phonemically as /we@/ and indeed, I believe, [we@] does
actually occur. The rhotic dialects of the southwest and rural Midlands
have [wE`] and possibly [we`] (tho rhotacism tends to lower vowels)

>>
>> Sorry, but no dialect I'm aware of has [we@] for 'were'.  'where', yes,
>> but not 'were'.  'Were' is [w3:], IME
>
Yep - as I say, I'm sure Andreas should have written "where".

> That was my impression, too, from a US-POV. Also surprising was Paul
> Bennett's "[w6:]", perhaps a mis-typing? since [6] is IMO very much an
> [a]-like sound.
Yes, [6] is a bit low - but as I've noted, rhotacism tends to lower vowel
sounds (we find this in many languages), so I'd not be be surprised at its
occurrence. My pronunciation when the word is stressed is [w3]; but the
word typically occurs unstressed as [w@] in my idiolect   :)

[snip]
> RP in general (*just my impression, mind you*) seems to raise/front/tense
> all the low vowels, and the South Africans I've encountered do it quite
> noticeably.  JRRT was born there, wasn't he?, though I don't know if he
> lived there long enough to acquire an indelible accent.
No - he was only 4 when the family left South Africa. As neither parent
was South African he probably hadn't picked up much, if any, of the accent
before he left the country. The few recordings of him I've seen on TV have
him speaking in the 'cultured tones' of an Oxford Don  :)

Ray
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ray.brown@freeuk.com
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Anything is possible in the fabulous Celtic twilight,
which is not so much a twilight of the gods
as of the reason."      [JRRT, "English and Welsh" ]

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