Re: English notation

Tom Tadfor Little wrote:

> me:
>
> Then I guess I still don't get it. Obviously I'm aware that a transcription
> based on an American accent will not be accurate for speakers of other
> accents, but the same is true of *any* transcription, right? And obviously
> I don't think that American English is the only kind there is. So I'm
> having trouble grasping what it is you're objecting to, if it is not my
> choice to transcribe with reference to American pronunciations rather than
> others.

Earlier, you said 'English' reffering to 'American Enlish'. That's all I
was whinging about.


>> especially strange dialects of it that tensify /I/ before /N/, for
>> example (that wasn't meant in any offencive way, btw, it was meant as
>> humour).
>
>
> Well, humor or no, it is getting a bit annoying now, since several other
> posters have established that /iN/ is widespread in American English, to
> the extent that I don't recall ever having heard /IN/ in this country,
> although I have lived on both coasts and in the midwest also.

Okay. I apologise. That was meant purely from my point of view. You
might think that my non-rhyming 'add' and 'mad' is strange; I think your
(regardless of whether it is one or one million people who do it) moving
[IN] to [iN] is strange. That's all.
Also, in listening to TV and Radio and whatnot, and american speakers
Down Under, i'v only ever heard [iN] once, and that was on some
recording. And the [i] was as short as an [I], but other /i/s where
lengthened too, if that's relevant.


>> And as I say later, you have to make the *most* amount of distinctions
>> as possible (although where you have otherwise impossible things, like
>> /i@(r)n/ versus /ir@n/, or /mam/ vs /mam/ (but the first one is /mVm/
>> and the second /mQm/ when you 'translate' them into other dialects)
>> you'd need two spellings to do it with.
>
>
> It's not clear to me what you are advocating here, and it is even less
> clear to me later on (which I guess I'm supposed to read first?)

I was just saying that to spellings of 'iron' (in scottish, the @ is
after the r, whereas others but it before, or don't have an r at all),
and two of 'mum' ('mum' and 'mom' would work well :), and maybe even two
of 'what' as well, might be needed. Though this may have been
irrelavant. And obvious. I'm not certain as to why exactly i said it.


> What's TO?

Traditional Orthoghraphy.


>> Sorry, you missed my point. My point was that if one was going to do a
>> phonemic transcription, they shouldn't choose some dialect that isn't
>> the most complicated;
>
>
> Why? This baffles me. If one is going for recognizability/readability
> (which was my point to begin with), then it seems a good strategy to pursue
> would be to preserve traditional orthography wherever it is reflected in
> the speech of some substantial group, and depart from it only when no one
> (or hardly anyone) pronounces the word as suggested by the traditional
> spelling. This strategy would imply keeping the <r> around, and also
> keeping <ing> as is. The former may not reflect many British accents; the
> latter may not reflect many American accents, but both are readily
> comprehended by anyone who reads English, and both are comprehensible if
> spoken phonetically by a non-native speaker.

I don't think i expressed myself clearly enough. All I meant was put as
many distinction in as is feasible, and then when people learn to read,
they simply have to collapse the ones they don't distinguish between
when reading. I'd ignore diffs between <or> and <aw> (for exapmle), and
people who rhymed 'mass' and 'pass' between (say) <a> and <aa> (or <ass>
  (that's not a full word! only the end of one!) and <as> (mass would be
<mass> and pass <pas> is what i mean there)*).

*Which would retain 'fast' as <fast>, but a word pronounced /f&st/ by
all (except those who use (say) /a/ for /&/ all the time) would be
<fasst>. Irrelivant to the content, but just so you don't miss the point
that i may've not expressed as clearly as i should've.


>>  spelling /"kVr@nt/ ans <kerent> or whatever it is
>> makes no sence to a fair amount of the population.
>
>
> You'll have to be more explicit about what you see as the problem. And I
> don't recall proposing <kerent>, so I'm not sure what the context this is.
Ahh. What I meant here, is that it appears that americans say /kr=@nt/
for 'current', and <kerent> would be the way to represent that. Many
others, however, have it as /kVr@nt/. (In these examples, </@/> may be
either /@/ or /I/, depending on dialect). I wasn't trying to suggest
you'd proposed that.


> Too much of a run-on sentence for me to parse successfully. You're
> advocating a reformed spelling that drops <r> in certain environments, but
> I can't seem to tease out the justification for that position, though it
> seems you intend it to be in here somewhere.

No, actually, I meant to be saying that a reformed spelling *should*
contain all the /r/s, because there are dialects that have these. It
*should* *also* *not* spell 'mass' and 'pass' with the same vowel,
because there are dialects which *don't* rhyme these.

That's all I was saying.



> Maybe it's me, but I've read this post about 4 times, and the only thing I
> believe I understand is that you don't care for my accent.   ;)
>

No. I never meant that. If I said that, it was an accident.

I apoligise if i have offended anyone. That was never my intention; i
was simply saying that as many differnces in speech that can't be
explained otherwise should be spelt differently. I should probably shut
up now.

Tristan

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