Re: Hear Me! Hear Me!

Tristan McLeay wrote:

> 'There' sounds as though it's having an abnormal pronunciation (it
> could, of course, be a normal pronunciation for you, but the rest is
The whole thing is normal for me, though it should be noted that it's
meant to demonstrate the voice I would use to recite poetry or read a
book aloud, rather than the accelerated voice I would use in casual
conversation. Sometimes there's a difference. This shouldn't affect
"there", however, which to most people I know here in S.A., is
definately diphthonic.

> fairly Australian so maybe I'm just linking it to what I know). 'World'
> sounded a bit strange, don't know what exactly it is, it could just have
> been a bit less rounded than mine is or something.
I emphasise the 'l' in "world" or "girl" more than most South Australians
would - some people would even say [weud].

> > Do you consider the vowel-phrase in "our"/"devour" to be a triphthong?
>
> I'd consider 'devour' to have a triphthong, but not 'our' (which is just
> /{u/; consider 'our own', which is [%{u"w8un], not [%{u"r\8un] (hmm...
> that looks like gibberish). ('Hour', however, has the the triphthong.)
No, I disagree - "hour" does not have a thriphthong because it's two
syllables [&w@] which makes the middle sound a consonant. Whereas in
"our" the middle sound is (to me, at least in slow deliberate speech)
a very subtle tightening in the back of the mouth which does not
constitute a syllable break. This makes it a triphthong (as opposed to
two vowels with a consonant in the middle, which is what "hour" is).

> > Its first vowel is the same [&] as in _south_ [s&uT] [which,
> > interestingly, is wider (closer to [a]) than the [&] in _at_ [&t] or
> > _aye_ [&i], which is relatively closed (closer to [E]).
>
> Probably not all that interesting, actually. The [{u] vowel derives from
> an earlier [au], whereas the [{i] comes from [ei], so they're just
> reflecting their heritage.
Yes but it's interesting from the point of view of discovering what
sounds can be distinguished in a dialect/idiolect.

> (I can't hear a difference, though.)
I came to notice it by listening to people in whose idiolect [{] in
_how_ and _hat_ are identical, and analysing why they sounded strange
to me. It's not an uncommon idiolect. After a while I realised it's
because my [{] in _how_ is wider, closer to [a].

> > I'm not sure which of these two variants is considered "pure" [&],
>
> My guess is it's [{u]'s vowel that is: I understand the Australia [{] is
> higher than the American, which is 'pure'. I'm pretty sure it's higher
> than the Finnish, if that helps.
I know that in most British speech I hear on TV, their regular [{] is
more like the one I use in [{u].

> (Tangentially, I've found me sometimes neutralising /I/ to [@] and
> raising /{/ to [E] when I shouldn't be, similar (but not identical) to
> what Kiwis* do. Nevertheless, /E/ doesn't seem to want to budge, and
> when it does, it heads south, merging with /{/ (cf. the salary/celery
> merger).)
I'm never sure about [E]. It's defined in my head as "halfway between
[e] and [{]", and I think you hear a lot of teenage girls using it in
place of [e] sometimes these days. But I'm pretty sure it doesn't
exist in my idiolect.

> > or how they are distinguished in narrow transcription,
>
> With a raised or lowered diacritic, or if you could afford it, with [a]
> for the lower of the two.
So "raised" and "lowered" refer to that distinction. OK. I'm a bit
fuzzy on the details of the terminology.

> Different to me: the middle vowel in the /{u@/ triphthong *is* a [u] (or
> [U] or [w] or something). Although it's normally included, it sometimes
> disappears, with compensatory lengthening on the previous vowel (i.e.
> [{;]). When it disappears, the [@] becomes more [{]-like. (The /u/ is
> very likely to die when the /@/ is pronounced as [r]; when it doesn't,
> the /u/ becomes an [y] for whatever reason; this occurs to any [u] (or
> whatever vowel I actually use there; I have suspicions it isn't
> [u]-proper) before an [r].)
I think your IPA is way in advance of mine. But I do know that "our"
is a word that differs greatly between different idiolects.

Adrian.

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