Re: allophones again, but English - not French

>On Thu, 11 Dec 2003 01:18:57 -0500 Roger Mills <romilly@...> wrote.
>Robert Jung wrote:
>
>  >Are these two thingies allophones or separate phonemes: /a/ [a], /A/
[A]?

>  Neither.  They're just variant ways of pronouncing the same phoneme
>depending on dialect area, or even on individuals' speech.  Usually written
>/a/.  Depending on which website's IPA sound samples you listen to,
American
>English /a/ can be either [a], [6] or [A].
What? Maybe for most standard dialects of American English, but that's a
very sweeping statement to make about all of English.

What about my 'lect |ass| /as/ (donkey) and |arse| /As/ (buttocks et al)?

Also |ant| and |aunt|, /ant/ and /Ant/.

More will doubtless come to me, but there's two examples right off the bat.
And, FWIW, by 'lect is Milton Keynes' British -- a mongrel dialect born in
the dialectical melting pot that is a "new city" in the English south-east
(or south-central depending on how you count it) -- further modified by
rural south-Buckinghamshire and urban west-of-London speech. Add to that
three years of living in rural North Carolina, USA, with an urban-NC native
of Missouran extraction, and you'll probably agree with me that my 'lect is
a true mongrel ;-)



Paul