USAGE: front vowel tensing [was: English notation]

Delurking briefly --

On Fri, 29 Jun 2001, Christian Thalmann wrote:

> Tom Tadfor Little wrote:
>
> > most non-phoneticians
> > would probably tell you that "English" and "rely" both have a "long E".
>
> Even an average American, who knows as good as nothing about
> linguistics, would have to realize after some contemplation that the
> sound in "English" is the same as in "bin": a short, lax /I/.
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'.

Dirk

--
Dirk Elzinga                          dirk.elzinga@m.cc.utah.edu

"The strong craving for a simple formula
has been the undoing of linguists."               - Edward Sapir

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