On Wed, 11 Oct 2000, Irina Rempt wrote:
>On Wed, 11 Oct 2000, Adrian Morgan wrote:
>
>> It's true that /i/ tends to be thought of as 'short' while /I/
>> tends to be thought of as 'long'. This is because occurences of /I/ in
>> many dialects of English _are_ almost always longer than occurences of
>> /i/.
>>
>> bit [bit]
>> beat [bI:t]
? Is that a typo?
>
>Have I been misunderstanding it all that time?
>
>I thought that it was [bIt] "bit" and [bi:t] "beat". To me, [bit]
>sounds like the Dutch _biet_ "beetroot",
I would say [bIt] = bit; [bit] = beat; [bi:t] = beet. A slight
difference in length between the last two.
>and [bI:t] almost as if it's spelt "bate".
No idea what [bI:t] might be.
Padraic.