Re: The fourteen vowels of English?

Joe scripsit:

> >I guess you merge the sounds of "war" and "door"?
>
> Almost everyone does.  And that of 'pour'.
Even I, firmly rhotic, merge all of these:  [wOr\], [dOr\], [pOr\].
However, 'pour' [pOr\] and 'poor' [pur\] remain firmly separate,
and I don't know of any rhotic dialect that merges them.

--
John Cowan  jcowan@reutershealth.com  www.reutershealth.com  www.ccil.org/~cowan
"The exception proves the rule."  Dimbulbs think: "Your counterexample proves
my theory."  Latin students think "'Probat' means 'tests': the exception puts
the rule to the proof."  But legal historians know it means "Evidence for an
exception is evidence of the existence of a rule in cases not excepted from."

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