Re: The fourteen vowels of English?

On Fri, 3 Sep 2004 23:33:25 -0400, Paul Bennett <paul-bennett@...> wrote:

>I remember reading somewhere that English has 14 vowels (presumably
>including diphthongs), but that every dialect collapses at least two of
>them together.
>
>Well, I decided to measure my own lect, and got some surprising results. I
>have at least 17 vowels that I can think of, all of which can appear
>between /h/ and /d/...
>
>/hid/ heed
>/hId/ hid
>/hed/ head
>/hEd/ haired
>/had/ had
>/hAd/ hard
>/hVd/ HUD - a bit of a cheat, since it's a acronym
>/hOd/ hoard (or whored)
>/h@U)d/ hoed (as in the garden tool)
>/hUd/ hood
>/hud/ who'd
>/h3d/ heard
>/hI@)d/ *heared (also seen in "beard")
>/hAj)d/ hide
>/hAj@))d/ hired
>/hej)d/ heyed (past of "to exclaim 'hey'")
>/hOj)d/ *hoyed (putative past of "to exclaim 'hoy'", which is a real
>exclamation, but I'm not sure I've ever seen it verbed).
>
>There may well be some missing /:/s in there, as I'm pretty bad at
>detecting vowel length in my own speech. The /Aj)/s might actually be
>/Vj)/ in my lect, or something in between.
>
>More than just something for y'all to chew on, since I'm still kinda half
>working on that onset/peak/coda writing system for English, and I think I
>need some opinions on what I've managed to drag together so far. I might
>need a distinct /ju/ from /u/, but I can only think of one case: /dud/
>dude ~ /djud/ dewed.
Since you've included /Aj@/, why not include /aw@/ as in "sour"? Though I
don't really understand why these are so often analyzed as one (compound)
vowel sound and not as /Aj, aw/ + /@/.

I guess you merge the sounds of "war" and "door"?

g_0ry_ˆs:
j. 'mach' wust

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