Re: Questions about Schwa and Stress

In a message dated 10/14/01 8:22:29 PM, romilly@EGL.NET writes:

<< I don't remember the dialogue in Fargo but I can imagine...  Certainly not

[&] (= æ?) which IIRC is as low as you can go, frontwise.  [hat] vs. [hAt]

is probably right.  But I think [a] is a _central_ vowel, and is what I've

always seen transcribed for Span. /a/.>>

    Yes, you've got the right symbol for [&], but, no, it's not as low as you
can go.  You can go lower with [a], and that's exactly how it looks on the
chart.  It's in my English in the diphthong [aj], in "light", [Lajt].  The
central vowel is the upside-down "a", which some have said is really the
vowel in words like "hut" and "but" and "cut" rather than [V].


<<While on the subject, N for final n is not uncommon (I heard it in Peru); h

for s is rife in the Caribbean, Argentina (and, so they say, lost in

Andalucia with changes in final vowel quality); dialects that have the more

fricative [y\] (or whatever-- but not [Z], that's Argentine) in 'yo' would

also tend to pronounce "ll" the same. >>

    My grandmother says [Zo] for "yo", but doesn't say [poZo] for "pollo",
she's says [pojo].

-David

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