Re: Questions about Schwa and Stress

David Peterson wrote:
>Muke Tuver wrote:
><< My abysmal inability to discern different qualities of vowels knows no
>bounds... I'm pretty sure it's [a] in mine too, 'cause I don't think it's
>quite like my English [A] at all... >>
>
>    Uh...I really don't think so.  The lips are, of course, very unrounded,
>but if you listen, that thing is a back vowel.  How to test?  Does the /a/
in
>Spanish sound like the /a/ used by nearly everyone in the movie Fargo?
It's
>not an [&] that they're using, but lower than that: [a].  I'm thinking in
>words like "hot" ([hat] rather than "normal" American English [hAt]).  That
>is, assuming I'm getting the symbols right: [A] is an unrounded, low back
>vowel and [a] is an unrounded, low front vowel?

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/.

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.