Re: OT: code-switching

DB> Spanish 'a'  is not like  RP  'a'  in  father  which  is  [A:]

Is there a "sound reference"-type site for RP?  I've heard enough
posh British accents to have a good general idea, but when it comes
to specifics it'd be nice to have something to listen to.

DB> I don't know enough about US accents to comment, but have a look here
DB> for sound reference
DB>
DB> http://www.ling.hf.ntnu.no/ipa/full/ipachart_vowels.html


MR> Well, that's interesting.  Neither of those sounds like a pure Spanish "a"
MR> to me; the [a] is too [&]-like and the [A] is too [O]-like.

AJ> That's no doubt because they're cardinal, whereas many (most?) languages use
AJ> something more centralish for their /a/'s. Spanish rank among
AJ> them IME; where great precision is required, one might transcribe
AJ> what I'm hearing as [a_-].

Hm.  What about Swedish <a>?   How would you render that with precision?

I remain convinced that the Spanish /a/ is the same vowel I have
in my personal (non-RP) pronunciation of "father"; based on the
above site, it lies somewhere between [a] and [A]. and could be rendered
[a-], but I'm not convinced it's closer to [a] than [A]; maybe it's
[A+].  At any rate, that is the vowel I use when speaking Spanish[*],
and I was once (lo these many years ago before I forgot so much)
mistaken for a native speaker by a native speaker.

-Mark

[*] For that matter, also when speaking German, French, Klingon, Russian,
    Esperanto, Italian, Norwegian, Swedish, Japanese, Lojban, Latin,
    Korean, Romanian, etc, etc, etc . . .

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