T. A. McLeay wrote:
> Mark J. Reed wrote:
>> On Dec 11, 2007 10:24 PM, T. A. McLeay <conlang@...> wrote:
>>
>>> [a?a]. You're wrong on that one. I have Anglophonic ears and I pronounce
>>> /V/ as (central) [a], and so use more-or-less that transcription. In
>>> England I think most people would hear [a] as /&/.
>>
>> Dadgum Rightpondians, screwing up my otherwise perfectly good
>> generaliZations. :)
[snip]
>> If the English hear [a] as /&/, what do they hear as /a/??
British English does not have /a/ ~ /&/. The phoneme that Merkans render
as /&/ is variously pronounced [&] or [a] in Britain, depending where
you are.
> SEEE = South East English English, what's common between RP and various
> London Englishes.
basically, 'sright - tho restricting it to 'London Englishes' is a bit
narrow IMO. It's general in the south-east of England, whether London or
not.
[snip]
> It's more accurate
> than "British English" which I'd originally written because the Scots
> are British and don't do any of this,
I'm fairly certain that [&] is found in some Lowland dialects - but the
variety of these dialects is something that we southerners find
bewildering - some of them are barely comprehensible to us. But
certainly the Highlanders (who are always nice and clear) and other
Lowland dialects have [a].
But that's not confined to Scotland; [a] is the norm in northern England
and in most of Wales, tho only exception being along the coastal plain
of the south east where [&] is commonly used.
> and there's other dialect groups
> in England too that I don't know how they deal with this stuff.
> As for
> the Scots, though, (SSE = Standard Scottish English), SSE:/a/
> corresponds to both AmE:/&/ and AmE:/a/
I'm not aware that there is a _standard_ Scottish English any more than
there is a standard Welsh English (except on the stage, where actors
seem to think all Welsh people speak as they do in the Neath valley!).
There is a marked difference between Highland speech and the several
Lowland varieties. The Highlanders do not conflate Merkan /&/ and /a/.
[snip]
--
Ray
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