Rhoticity and other stuff.

> Adrian announce;
> I still need rhoticity to be unambiguously explained to me, as it's
> something I have unresolved questions about.
Barbara Babbles;
It's covered faily well in The Cambridge Encyclopedia of English.

However my own "rule-of-thumb" definition is that Rhoticity occurs when any
vowel is extended in length and the qualtiy changed so that it imitates an
approximate, usually untrilled "r". Thus although New Yorkers, New
Englanders, Southern Americans, South Africans, Australians, Kiwis,
Japanese, and Southern English all use slightly different vowels, for say
the word english word "car", it can be "sight-spelled" for all these accents
as "ka".

In the CB system it's represented by a diacritic, and all diacitics are
introduced by ^, thus rhotoric "car" is represented as /kæ^r/. for Recieved
Pronounciation.

Rhoticity is a facinating study in itself, particularly when it indicates
social divisions.

Many insights into roticity can be gained from Well's 3 volume "Accents of
English".

"IMAGINARY SOUNDS"
This designation was coined by Robert, who's a speach therapist with
children who have hearing and speaking difficulties. (the revision of CB was
to include the notation of disordered speech and even expand on it). Some
children with hearing difficulties try to produce the sound they think they
hear rather than the one actually being made. my error in the original post
was I should have made clear that the extended voiceless trill was
epiglottal noy alveolar.

"FITS" & Andreas
Can't say I'd use these myself because for me many of the symbols used are
counter-intuitive; but as said, some people such as C programmers would find
these usages intuative.

Every ASCII/IPA system is devisied to meet different needs and perceptions
for its users, or sometimes to overcome percieved failings in other systems
in certain areas. Therefore every system has merit, and every system has
failings. Once I get my web site up in the summer one of the things I indend
to do (along with collating Well's data so that one can look up the closest
accent to ones own to find the phonemic IPA representation of it) is to
present all the ASCII/IPA systems, their logic, and their strengths and
weaknesses. I'd be happy to include FITS and Andreas's systems particularly
as I can x-examne the creators on obscure points!
Aside: Andreas; any chance of giving your system a name to know it by?

"KILO"
Here in England the word is a contraction of Kilogram, and its
pronounciation rhymes with "Key - Low" - differences up and down the country
are in the final "o" which is locally represented by huge variety of
diphthongs.

Aside: I do wish folk wouldn't just say "english" but specify *which*
variety of english they're talking about. Such phrases as "...generally in
english it's pronounced..." are almost always untrue for whichever major
accents/dialects of english are excluded in the writers mind, and only
creates confusion in the minds of those other english speakers who use a
different dialect/accent from the writer. For example most of the
pronounciations of "kilo" that have been give are totally alien to me, and
without the context they come from, totally meaningless too. Another
example: I'm Irish, so all my "l"s are "clear", thus I spent many
frustrating hours trying to make any sense of instuctions like; "like the
"l" in "pool" and never as the "l" in "life", and likewise after reading
that strong "o" was a diphthong in english I spent years trying to divide
the "o" sound into parts - I didn't realise that in my accent strong "o" is
a monophthong!

Barbara

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