Re: YAEPT: OMFG I'm a mutant!!! (was Re: Advanced English to become official!)

Paul Bennett <paul-bennett@...> wrote:
> I seem to be at odds with the entire English-speaking world. Not only do I
> distinguish /i\/ from /@/ (which apparently is unheard of in both American
> and British dictionaries, but to my ear as clear as a bell in actual
> speech on both sides of the pond),
Odd, I have the opposite problem: hard to find the distinction between the
unstressed /i\/-like sound and /@/, and always have to go to my AHD to find
out what the 'standard' is.  (It sometimes, but not always, seems to follow
the orthography, which is to say the spelling doesnt help.)

Er, unless you mean the /i\/ of words like "just".  I recognize that one.
(And so apparently does the AHD, though like the above sound not
distinguishing it from unstressed /I/.)

> but I clearly have [V] for /V/, and never [@]. A stressed /@/ in my lectis
> pronounced as whatever vowel it was reduced from, which is almostuniversally
> reconstructable based on English's lovely morphoetymologicalspelling, and a
> small measure of knowledge of etymology.
I have no trouble distinguishing [V] and [@] either, though the stressed /@/
is almost never enforced to its unreduced form, except in a few function words
which are always normally unstressed (e.g. to, an, the).  Ordinary words spoken
slowly with emphasis on each syllable would still have the schwatic sound,
unless specifically trying to indicate the spelling as well (though admittedly
this is probably the most common reason for stressing schwas at all).


	*Muke!
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