Re: Spelling pronunciations (was: rhotic miscellany)

Mark J. Reed wrote:

>Muke Tever wrote:
>
>
>>>I think that's _most_ American dialects.  Er, what vowel do your people
>>>put in it?
>>>
>>>
>
>"My people call it maize."
>
>Sorry, just found the "your people" bit amusing. :)
>
>
I like owning people.

>Tristan Mc Leay replied:
>
>
>>In general---a letter that denotes /w/ plus a letter that denotes a
>>short a has the letter that denotes a short a pronounced with a short o.
>>
>>
>
>Except here we run into terminology difficulties.  To me, "short a"
>means /&/, which is certainly not the vowel in "wash" or any of the
>other example words.
>
That's precisely the sound I'm talking about, though. Originally the
non-/&/ sounds were the same as /&/ was, though I imagine it was before
the fronting and they were closer to [a] or [A]. The a in 'what', if you
ignore the 'w'-bit, would represent a short a (as in /h&t/). *That's*
what I meant.

--
Tristan.