Re: OT: Intergermansk - Traveller's Phrasebook

--- "Thomas R. Wier" <trwier@...> wrote:

<snip>

> >
> > I'll take a stab at how Gary might pronounce it:
> year = ee-aa
>
> I rather doubt that. Gary said he's a Midwesterner,
> IIRC, and
> except in a few redoubts in major cities like
> Chicago, nonrhotic
> dialects are entirely absent.  He would transcribe
> it "ee-eer".
>
I'm not up on phonology so I don't know how to
transcribe it properly.  My dialect seems pretty
standard "American T.V. English". I was born and
raised in Michigan, spent 30 years in Los Angeles and
now reside in Oregon and my pronunciation doesn't
differ noticably from others I've known in the city
all three of those regions.  (Rural folks up here have
a distinct Orygun drawl that I can duplicate, but I
can't begin to describe it.)

For me the difference between "ear" and "year" is that
the "ee" sound at the start of "year" has more force
behind it, and it seems to my untrained ear that the
onset of vocalization comes a few milliseconds sooner
for "year" than for "ear". Also, the onset of
vocalization in "y" is more gradual while the onset of
vocalization in "ear" is abrupt and glottal-stoppish.
(Think of a bowed string attack vs a pizzicato string
attack. (Sorry. I'm more up on electronic music
syntesizers than spoken phonology.)) Were it not for
that small but very noticable difference in onset the
two words would be identical.

As to whether "y" in that context is a vowel or a
consonant, the choice seem pretty arbitrary to my
untrained ear.  I classify the sound as a vowel.  If
that does not agree with convention then so be it.
I'm not an expert, and that classification works for
me.  I do pronounce "R" quite distinctly, not in the
East Coast, or Bostonian style at all.

Another noticable difference in the pronunciation of
"The year I went to Scotland..." and "The ear I listen
with..." is that "the year" is a continuous gliding
vowel sound connecting the words, and "the ear" has a
slight glottal stop between "the" and "ear".  If
anything, the "e" has more consonant-like qualitites
in this context than the "y" because an actual stop
preceeds the "e" of "ear" in "the ear" and no stop
preceeds the "y" of "year" in "the year".
("thuh'eeir" vs "thueeir")

By those standards, "e" with it's onset stop should be
called a consonant and "y", lacking the onset stop,
should be a vowel. ;-)

--gary

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