Hi,
>>Also, bringing this thread back to its roots, I'd like to address
something I've noticed in the speech of a friend of mine from LA.
>>I can't remember all of the particulars but I'll try to elucidate some
of what I hear.
>>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/
<...>
>In fact, it feels a bit like what you do to
>pronounce the unrounded back vowel in Russian, only not as far away
>from English /u/.
In fact, the Northern Welsh _u_, eh?
In this case, this "too" thing thing sounds exactly like "house".
Cool...
Bye,
Pavel