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.
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