Re: Hear Me! Hear Me!

[Two replies combined into one to keep list traffic down]

On Mon, 2002-06-24 at 09:43, Adrian Morgan wrote:
> 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.
Which sounds very much English to me.

> I emphasise the 'l' in "world" or "girl" more than most South Australians
> would - some people would even say [weud].
Really? There seems to generally be an /l/ in words like 'world' at
least in my experience. It can get very dark at times (i.e. heading in
the direction of being purely a vowel), but it's still a consonant
generally.

> > > 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).
Umm... I don't distinguish between the sound of 'hour' and 'devour'.
Perhaps /{w@/ would be a better representation; when sung, they often
are condensed to just /{w/.

> > (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.
I have been led to understand that the vowel in the word 'get' is /E/.
It may well be that it is higher than [E], especially in Adelaide (I've
heard that at least some Adelaidians speak with vaguely Kiwi-sounding
accents, although in my experience, that isn't so.) /e/ is generally
used to transcribe the sound in 'day' when used in an English context.

> > > 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.
Yeah, unless I'm wrong too.

> > 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.
Could be. I should note that my /{/ and your /&/ refer to the same
vowel.

----------------

On Mon, 2002-06-24 at 14:32, Adrian Morgan wrote:
> Aleks Koch wrote:
>
> > Well...Also when I pronounce a word like "soda" I pronounce it
> > /soUdR/ that is IPA-ASCII /s/ /oU/ /d/ /R/
>
> For me, the "a" in "soda" is a schwa, and the "o" is the same
> diphthong as in "spoke". I'm not confident enough with the IPA to
> transcribe this sort of thing. Phonemically it's equivalent to /o/,
> despite being a diphthong phonetically.
Not of course that you use 'soda' terribly often, except when referring
to 'soda water'. (They're generally called 'soft drinks' or 'fizzy
drinks' here.)

I believe the vowel used in Australia for a 'long o' (i.e. the sound in
the name of the fourth vowel, that is, O) is [8u] (a rounded mid-high
vowel going off to [u] or [w] or some similar vowel). It's certainly
different from both the RP [@u] and the GA [ou] or [o:].

Don't worry Aleks: you probably don't sound at all like an Aussie to an
Aussie.

> This reminds me of a certain distinction between some [dia|idio]lects:
>
> For me, there is a rule that the "o" in "spoke":
>  - cannot precede an /l/ in the same syllable,
>  - but *can* precede an /l/ that is the start of the *next* syllable.
I simply have one rule: [8u] cannot proceed /l/ in either the next or
the same syllable. Instead, one of /Q/ ('short o' as in 'on') or [Qu],
an allophone of 'long o', is used. The distribution is pretty random,
although there is a tenuous relationship with the spelling. I think [Qu]
is the preferred sound and /Q/-words tend to merge into it.

To me, pronouncing 'coat' and 'coal' with the same vowel makes the
speaker sound British or American or something...

> This can be contrasted with dialects in which either the first or
> second half of this rule is void.
>
> Because the first half, I pronounce "gold" as [gOud], which is
> pretty universal in Australia but can be contrasted with [gold]
> which is common in British speech.
Pretty universal? You're ignoring the second largest city, the capital
city, and all the towns I've ever been too (from Geelong and Warrigal to
Tamworth and Gunnedah (but none outside Vic./NSW/ACT)) in that? I'm
almost certain I consistently hear an /l/-sound in 'gold'.

However, again, I'll admit our pronunciation is different to that of
England.

> Because of the second half, the diphthongs in the first syllables of
> "solo" and "polio" are for me the same "o" in "spoke". However, in a
> common alternative idiolect (i.e. common in Australia) this second
half
> of the rule is void and the vowel [O] is used instead.
What vowel is [O] being used to represent here? The sound of the word
'court' or 'cot' or 'coat' or 'coal'?

For me, both 'soul' and 'solo' have the same first vowel phonetically;
it is the two vowels of 'solo' that are different (although they're the
same phonemically).

Also, is the vowel in 'school' for you more like a long version of 'put'
or the vowel of 'moot'? (For me, the former.)

Tristan.