Re: OT: YAEPT: English low vowels (was briefly: Re: Y/N variants (< OT: English and front rounded vowels))

Mark J. Reed wrote:
> On Dec 12, 2007 7:36 AM, R A Brown <ray@...> wrote:
>
>> British English does not have /a/ ~ /&/. The phoneme that Merkans render
>> as /&/ is variously pronounced [&] or [a] in Britain, depending where
>> you are.
>
>
> OK, sorry.  By /a/ I meant the vowel that typifies the PALM lexical set,
> which is what I hear  [a] and [A] and points in between as.  Which may or
> may not be related to the fact that IML, that set has merged with LOT,
> CLOTH, and THOUGHT.
>
> So to restate my question: where [a], which I hear as PALM, is instead heard
> as TRAP, then what phones *are* heard as PALM?
/tr&p/ /pAm/

We are aware that American LOT & THOUGHT generally have the same, or
similar vowel, to our PALM; but we 'hear' that as the American way of
saying /Q/ and /O/ respectively. Normally context makes this quite clear
but occasionally IME if an unusual proper name containing one of these
vowels is said by an American speaker it is not always clear which Brit
phoneme it would map to.

--
Ray
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