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Re: How to Make Chicken Cacciatore (was: phonetics by guesswork)

From:Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...>
Date:Sunday, July 25, 2004, 15:39
On Sun, Jul 25, 2004 at 08:29:24AM -0400, J. 'Mach' Wust wrote:
> I didn't say that this contrast existed in English, though thanks to Paul > Bennett we now have an example of it in modern RP, and we might almost > construct a minimal pair: |haired| [hE:d] vs. |head| [hed].
What contrast? Now I'm more confused. You said that the vowel in "pet" is clearly distinct from both [e] and [E], and I asked what variety of English you were talking about. In GA, the vowel in "pet" *is* [E]. I thought that was true of RP as well, but not if |head| has [e]. As I've said before, the vowel [e] is absent from my idiolect of English except when it appears as the first part of the "long a" diphthong [ej]. As a non-New-Englander Amerikaner, my 'lect is also rhotic, so the contrast between my |haired| and |head| is [hE`r\d] vs. [hEd]. Except when I'm overcome by my Southeastern surroundings, in which case the word |haired| turns into something like ['hejr\=d]. :)
> I was only saying that the sound of English |pet| is closer than the sound > of French |chantais|, German |Räder|, which are both usually represented as > [E] (and pretty much identical).
Okay. Either I wasn't paying attention, or it was a quirk of my (non-native) teachers' speech, but I have the same vowel in all four of |chantais|, |chantez|, |Räder|, |Reeder|; they are homophonic pairs. (That vowel is [e], which I learned to pronounce in Spanish class).
> I: RP, GA |bit|, German |bitte, bete, Reeder|, French |chantez|
I don't see how either vowel in |chantez| could possibly be [I]. -Marcos

Replies

Roger Mills <rfmilly@...>
Philip Newton <philip.newton@...>