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Re: English notation

From:Herman Miller <hmiller@...>
Date:Saturday, June 30, 2001, 3:51
On Fri, 29 Jun 2001 03:31:23 EDT, David Peterson <DigitalScream@...>
wrote:

> In my dialect, I can't have any "short" vowels before /N/ or /r/ except >for I can have /Er/, as in "air". I say /i:NglIS/, definitely, and mostly >/r@laj/. I totally disagree with all those "rules" that say words like >"singer" are pronounced /sINr=/, or, even worse, /sINgr=/, and that "fear" is >pronounced /fIr/. No way! If anything, "fear" has two syllables in my >dialect: /'fi.jr=/. So, where's everyone else? I guess I'll read the rest >of these e-mails and see.
I can't have any _"long"_ vowels before /N/ (although I do have the diphthong oi before /N/ in a handful of words) -- thus, I've used long vowels before /N/ as features of alien languages to distinguish them from English. "Randarong", the name of a city, is natively pronounced /'randaro:N/ (not /'rænd@rON/ as it would be in my English pronunciation). I have "short" vowels only before intervocalic /r/ (the word "sorry" /'sQri/ is the only one that comes to mind, but it's possible there are others). Other vowels before /r/ are so different from non-r-colored vowels that for a long time I accepted the traditional idea that they're really the "short" vowels. But I think they're more intermediate between the "short" and "long" vowels, and a bit closer to the "long" ones. In particular, the /or/ in "story" contrasts with the /Qr/ in "sorry". I also distinguish between one-syllable "sear" /sir/ and two-syllable "seer" /si@r/, although this may be an idiosyncrasy. (note that I don't actually pronounce "long" vowels longer than "short" ones)