Re: YAEPT: STRUT (was: RFC: Renaming 3B to Tezenki)

H. S. Teoh wrote:


| > > The same is true for Russian and Ukrainian speakers. I still am not
sure
| > > about the precise quality of English /V/.
| >
| > I thought [V] was the reduced phone of the Russian /a/ and /o/
| > phonemes?  So I thought <kholodylnik> was [xVlV'd15nik].
| [...]
|
| That's what I thought, too. I'm not too sure about the precise value of
| [V], but a "lax [a]" is certainly what happens in Russian words such as
| хорошо [xVrV"So:] and большое [bVl^j"So:j@], at least to my ears.

The correct pronunciation:
холодильник [x@5V"d;il;n;ik]
хорошо [x@rV"So]
большое [bVl;"Soj@]
where [;] stands for palatalization [_j].
1. No length distinction.
2. /o/ and /a/ indeed merge in unstressed positions, but have allophonic [V]
only in the Grade 1 reduction (that is, the first prestressed syllable, and
the final open one). Otherwise it is [@].
3. Most speakers perceive unstressed /o/ as if it "alternates" with /a/.
That is why we usually perceive [V] as a variant of [a].

We all know that precise IPA values differ from language to language. I hear
*Russian* [V] as in the IPA chart, but the *GA* [V] sound like [6], while
the *RP* [V] is definitely [7] for me (and I indeed pronounce _but_ as
[b7t], and still nobody complains), OTOH the *Portuguese* [6] is more like
[&] for me, while the *German* [6] is a pharyngalized [a]... Am I deaf?

Also, daniel prohaska wrote:

| Yitzik,
| RP /V/ is rather close to [a], though further back and with spread lips
| (unround). The realisations vary very much regionally.

That's what I meant saying
| I still am not sure
| about the precise quality of English /V/.

My L1 is vey untolerant to dialect accents, so I sometimes forget that there
is no such thing as "normal" English.

-- Yitzik
~~Ich sprech' kein Deutsch, ich sprech' normal!~~

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