Re: USAGE: front vowel tensing [was: English notation]

> Not necessarily. Many varieties of Western American English
> (including the one I speak, and presumably the one Tom speaks)
> has front vowel tensing before the velar nasal. This means that
> the vowels in 'peek' and 'pink' are distinguished only by
> nasality: 'pink' has a nasal vowel and 'peek' does not. Likewise
> 'bake' and 'bank'.

So the /&/ goes to /ej/? Some american i talk about the phonetics of our
englishes with claims he uses [&j] (but only allophonic) before /N/, and
i have [&i] there too, which means it collapses with /&i/ and is sung as
/E:/, which means in certain styles of singing (like when singing the
Anthem), the RP vowels /eI/, /E@/, and {/&/ before an /N/} all collapse
into the same sound. (And so do /OI/ (my /Oi/), /O@/, /O:/, and /Q:/)

And is there a difference between /ej/ and /ei/? Why is it that
americans tend to discribe the diphthongs as ending in a consonant, and
brits and aussies and others use a vowel? is this just some tradition
designed to confuse the crap out of me? (and, for the record, the final
elements of my diphthongs all seem to me to be high tense vowels, except
in /I:@/.

Tristan

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