Re: USAGE: syllables

On Sat, 2003-06-14 at 15:37, Joe wrote:
> > That's what I meant when I said "Next to each other".  I find it
> > rediculously hard to pronounce two adjacent vowels seperately.
>
> Oops.  Ignore that.  It's quite silly.  I just had a brain-fart, that's all
No it's not. Maybe you can and find it perfectly easy, but the statement
itself isn't quite silly. Very few Australians, in my experience, can
hear the difference between two adjacent vowels (unless the first is
high) and two vowels separated by [r\]. Ask them to produce a sequence
of two vowels, and, unless the first is high, there'll be a [r\] or [?]
there. It takes some work trying to convince people of this. (Why [r\]?
Because Australian English is non-rhotic, so when you add [IN] to a word
like 'care' [k_he:], you get [k_he:r\IN].)

--
Tristan.