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Re: General phonetics // was "Newbie"

From:John Cowan <cowan@...>
Date:Tuesday, January 13, 2004, 22:16
Mark J. Reed scripsit:

> > The words 'hut' and 'heart', for example, are distinguised only by the > > duration of the 'ah' sound. > > In what dialect of English is the vowel of <hut> the same as the vowel > of <heart>?
Australian! Australian has no back low vowels at all (with a few lexical exceptions) and uses [hat] for "hut" and [ha:t] for "heart". So length is phonemic.
> > the 'h' in 'huge' is objectively much closer to the 'ch' in German > > 'ich' than the 'h' in 'hunt'. > > I'm not sure what this means. Do you mean that the <h> in <huge> > is closer to the <ch> in <ich> than it is to the <h> in <hunt>, > or than the <h> in <hunt> is to the <ch>?
I take it to mean the former. Also true in my idiolect. -- "You're a brave man! Go and break through the John Cowan lines, and remember while you're out there jcowan@reutershealth.com risking life and limb through shot and shell, www.ccil.org/~cowan we'll be in here thinking what a sucker you are!" www.reutershealth.com --Rufus T. Firefly