Re: Insult (jara: Weekly Vocab 8)

On Mon, May 26, 2003 at 05:34:12PM +0100, Joe wrote:
> How odd.  "British short a", to me, sounds exactly the same as "American
> short a".  However, in words such as 'bath', 'grass', and most two-syllable
> words, an American short A becomes a English |ar|-type sound ([A:]).  (in
> southern English).  However, some short words, such as 'ham', 'cat',
> and some long ones, 'hamster', have [&].
Very odd.  I've heard a lot of Brits speak, but maybe I've not
heard them say  cat", and my experience with the British
pronunciation of that word was actually Americans faking the accent
and taking it too far. :)  Because the "cat" I heard was more
like my pronunciation of "cot" (which is identical to my
pronunciation of "caught", btw).

> eg. Basketball: StAmE [b&skItbOl](I think)
Well, the second vowel isn't a full [I]; I'd spell it [1] (or whatever
the conlang-modified-X-SAMPA equivalent is for LATIN CAPITAL LETTER I
WITH STROKE).  And in my pronunciation, it's [Al] rather than [Ol].

-Mark