Re: OT: pronunciation question

On 5/25/06, Joe <joe@...> wrote:
> veritosproject@GMAIL.COM wrote:
>
> > Do you guys, gals, etc., differentiate [Ej] and [e]?
>
> [e] isn't part of my dialect.  If someone used [e], I'd probably hear it
> as [Ej] or [E], depending on context.
Same here.

For example, I've heard Scots whose English had monophthongs for some
of my diphthongs; in particular, IIRC they had [o:] for GOAT, [u:] for
GOOSE, and [e:] for FACE. So her [e:] is my [Ej], one and the same
phoneme.

In (my also native) German, they're separate, since it has an /e/
phoneme (which is [e:] in native words but can also be [e:\] in
loanwords), and knows [Ej] from loanwords. (However, [Ej] tends to
become [e:], e.g. |Baby| is [bEjbi:\] for some but [be:bi] for
others.)

Cheers,
--
Philip Newton <philip.newton@...>