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

On Sun, 25 Jul 2004 13:14:40 -0400, Roger Mills <rfmilly@...> wrote:

>As I wrote earlier, I'm puzzled by JMW's problem, since the contrast does
>exist in German.
No, this contrast doesn't exist in German. You might be mislead by the fact
that traditional German phonetic spelling uses both [I] and [e]. However,
these don't ever contrast since what is normally transcribed as [I] is
always short, and what is normally transcribed as [e:] as always long.

There are indeed instances of short unstressed [e], but they could as well
be considered to be [I]. Who could tell whether the first vowel of
|Stenographie| were the same as in |beten| but short, or the same as in
|bitten|? I couldn't. The only reason why it's considered to be [e] not [I]
is that it always corresponds to |e|. There are no comparable words with
unstressed [I] that could contrast, since unstressed [I] doesn't occur but
in native endings.

>But [I] and [e] _are_ close to each other in the vowel triangle;
(Trapezoid, I suppose.) Which ones? The German ones coincide with each other
and with "French [e]" and with English [I]. "English [e]" (if we use this
sign for the vowel of |bed|) is clearly another sound.

I remember mispronouncig the Spanish word |mate| with "German [e:]" (or, as
I'm arguing, with [I]); Spanish people repeatedly misunderstood me and
perceived 'mati'.

My sister's French teacher, a insufferable fanatic of 'correct' conservative
French pronunciation, made them to pronounce "French [e]" (or, as I'm
arguing, [I]) as if it were German [I], so that they wouldn't pronounce it
like the vowel of RP/GA |bet, bed|, which is the common realisation of short
and long _e_ in our dialect (and which doesn't occur either in standard
French or in standard German).

>Thinking about it, I wonder where his English teacher came from??? Perhaps
>South Africa, where they seem to raise and slightly tense their vowels,
>compared to RP and Murkin?  Perhaps some area of Britain does the same?
He spoke GA, and this is the dialect I have most contact with, though I also
have an idea of RP in my ears.

g_0ry@_ˆs:
j. 'mach' wust

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