Re: English notation

At 12:27 2001-06-29 -0600, Tom Tadfor Little wrote:

>Seriously, though, it's been my experience that Europeans, even when they
>learn American English, tend to have some British characteristics in their
>speech as well. Major differences, like the pronunciation of "r", short
>"o", and "a" are observed, but more subtle things, like the pacing with
>which syllables are articulated, or precise qualities of some vowels
>(particularly in unstressed syllables) are likely to follow the British
>pattern.
I find this to be true of my accent.  By far the majority of English
speakers I've actually conversed with spoke Irish or North American
accents, but the teachers at school spoke something RP-ish.

I might add that I don't necessarily consider this kind of mixture a bad thing.

BTW I find that my /@/ (which I use also for STRUT) is rounded -- an
influence from my native dialect of Swedish.  Another such influence is
that LOT, FATHER and THOUGHT tend all to be pronounced with the same low
back *rounded* sound.  My native dialect has no unrounded [A] while its [O]
is too high for LOT but too short for THOUGHT, so to speak.  I suppose [O]
might occur for unstressed /ow/ when I'm off guard!  The degree of foreign
accent in my English is definitely variable with the formality of the
situation and how tired I am!



/BP 8^)>
--
B.Philip Jonsson mailto:bpX@netg.se (delete X)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~__
                A h-ammen ledin i phith!                \ \
     __  ____ ____    _____________ ____ __   __ __     / /
     \ \/___ \\__ \  /___  _____/\ \\__ \\ \  \ \\ \   / /
     / /   / /  /  \    / /Melroch\ \_/ // /  / // /  / /
    / /___/ /_ / /\ \  / /Melarokko\_  // /__/ // /__/ /
   /_________//_/  \_\/ /Eowine __  / / \___/\_\\___/\_\
Gwaedhvenn Angelmiel \ \______/ /a/ /_h-adar Merthol naun
  ~~~~~~~~~Kuinondil~~~\________/~~\__/~~~Noolendur~~~~~~
|| Lenda lenda pellalenda pellatellenda kuivie aiya! ||
"A coincidence, as we say in Middle-Earth" (JRR Tolkien)