Re: REAL newb question
| From: | Tristan <zsau@...> |
|---|
| Date: | Tuesday, April 30, 2002, 8:41 |
|---|
On Tue, 2002-04-30 at 13:41, Aidan Grey wrote:
> At 10:10 PM 4/29/2002 -0400, you wrote:
> >Are the vowels sounds like concrete? I cant mess with em?
>
> How do you mean, "mess with them"? The vowel /a/ is set, and it always
> represents the same thing, but how /a/ is written can be represented all
> kinds of different ways. The //s indicate that the sound is the phonetic
> representation, that is, how it is pronounced.
Actually, terribly sorry to confuse but no, that's incorrect. Slashes
(i.e. /) are used to indicate *phonemic* sounds. Thus, I can say that
'get' is pronounced /"gEt/. However, the way a New Zealander and I
pronounce it are still different. Square brackets are used for phonemic
representation, in which case you'd represent the NZer's pronunciation
as [gIt] or [get] or something (it's about in between the two, I think).
So, to summarise: [a] is set in stone. /a/ is variable and denotes a
sound at about [a], but it could just as accurately be [{]. <a> (i.e.,
the orthographical representation) is as free as you want it to be to...
like it could represent /sfla:f@l/ if you wanted it to. Although I don't
recommend that.
Tristan
Reply