Re: Californian vowels [was Re: Liking German]

In a message dated 10/1/01 12:29:21 AM, AL260@AOL.COM writes:

<< In his speech the vowel /u/ becomes /y/ or something close to that in some
environments. Right now I don't really remember what those environments might
be but a few of the words I remember are:


food /fyd/

too /ty/


hrm...I hesitate to say that it's exactly /y/ because 'too' doesn't sound
like french 'tu' to me.


Anyway, are there any LA people out there or Southern Californians in general
who might help out? >>

    Ha, ha, ha!  Why, yes, I actually have a lot to say about this.
    First of all, someone else suggested that this might be the unrounded
back vowel I was talking about earlier, and that it might sound like rounded
front to your untrained ears.  I can assure you that this is not true.  I
have [y] or [Y] occasionally in my speech, and I've noticed that it occurs in
others' speech, as well.  In fact, just this night, my roommate and I went
down to get something to eat (he's from El Monte), and he said to me:

    "Oh, so you think the cheese makes my sandwich French, too?"

[Note: I'd said something like, "Ooh, la-di-da, Mr. Frenchman!  Not only do
you slice your sandwich, but you do so diagonally!"  A Simpsons inspired
sally (cf. "car hole").  Then I said, "I bet you've got cheese in there,
huh?"  This was to what he replied.]

    The first time he said this, he said [tsy] or heavily aspirated [t_hy]
for "too", and then I looked at him, because (a) he did the heavy aspiration
almost affrication that I do in my speech for [t], and (b) he pronounced a
rounded front vowel.  When he noticed that I was looking at him, he then
quickly said [t_huw].  No lie!  So this appears to be a naturally occuring
phenomenon not just in my speech, but in the speech of a lot of Southern
Californians.  This is so odd because we also (and this goes for just about
every Californian) have completely unrounded [u] and [U] in almost all cases
(rounded before bilabials, as someone pointed out).  So, yeah, we've got some
weird vowels.  But then, on top of that, is what I mentioned first, where
initial [t] is almost becoming the affricate [ts] everywhere except before
[a]--and this is no joke; it's really happening.  I've been noticing this
over the past year or so.  So, to outline, Southern California English
features:

1.) Rounded Front Vowels after [t] or [ts] and [f] (I can't seem to nail down
any sane rendering of the
    environment; I have to give it some more study)
2.) Unrounded Back Vowels everywhere except after Bilabial Segments
3.) Either [ts] or heavily aspirated [t] in initial position except before [a]

-David

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