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

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

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