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Re: German and English (was Re: Losing languages ...)

From:Benct Philip Jonsson <bpj@...>
Date:Tuesday, October 7, 2003, 16:53
At 07:02 29.9.2003, Ray Brown wrote:

>On Saturday, September 27, 2003, at 09:59 , BP Jonsson wrote: > >>At 14:53 25.9.2003 -0400, John Cowan wrote: >> >>> > English: *stain > *sta:n > *stO:n > sto:n > stOun > st@Un >>> >>>Of course, the numerically largest dialect is conservative here and >>>doesn't make it through the last transition. >> >>In the early 20th century there were extreme RP speakers (mostly or >>exlusively male) who even had [E@]. That however was too extreme >>and receded. > >Yes indeed. But in the colloquial speech of north Surrey, where I now >live, the sound is entirely unrounded and centralized [@1] ; to those >unused to it, "coat" sounds distinctly like "kite"!
It just occurred to me that I read somewhere that some speakers have [AM] for /AU/ as in _mouth_. Together with [@i\] for /oU/ that means that three English diphthongs are now very close in pronunciation, which will make EngEng even harder for us poor furriners.
>>I'm of course a bloody furriner and waver between [ow] and [o:] >>depending on level of concentration. > >A lot of native born Brits use [o:] :-) >It's normal in "Welsh English" as well as most (all?) regions of >north England as well as the Scottish Highlands.
The problem is of course that my L1 has only one -u diphthong /au/ which moreover occurs only in loanwords like _paus_ or _kaos_. Since I've begun to take care pronouncing THOUGHT words Americanly with [A] I at least don't do any un-nativelike confusion of phonemes with /oU/ = [o:]. /BP 8^) -- B.Philip Jonsson mailto:melrochX@melroch.se (delete X) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~__ A h-ammen ledin i phith! \ \ __ ____ ____ _____________ ____ __ __ __ / / \ \/___ \\__ \ /___ _____/\ \\__ \\ \ \ \\ \ / / / / / / / \ / /Melroch\ \_/ // / / // / / / / /___/ /_ / /\ \ / /'Aestan ~\_ // /__/ // /__/ / /_________//_/ \_\/ /Eowine __ / / \___/\_\\___/\_\ Gwaedhvenn Angeliniel\ \______/ /a/ /_h-adar Merthol naun ~~~~~~~~~Kuinondil~~~\________/~~\__/~~~Noolendur~~~~~~ || Lenda lenda pellalenda pellatellenda kuivie aiya! || "A coincidence, as we say in Middle-Earth" (JRR Tolkien)

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Ray Brown <ray.brown@...>Eng regionalisms (was: German and English)