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Re: Hear Me! Hear Me!

From:Tristan McLeay <kesuari@...>
Date:Monday, June 24, 2002, 13:26
On Mon, 2002-06-24 at 23:16, Adrian Morgan wrote:
> Tristan McLeay wrote, quoting myself:
> > I have no idea whether Australian English has [a] or [A], I think it's > > actually in between the two, the first vowel of the diphthong /ai/ is > > different from the sound of 'car'. This is irrelevant at the moment, > > though. > > I can't hear a difference.
Maybe you have none.
> > Yup, [h8u-li] sounds RP to me all right. Well, [h@u...] would sound RP, > > but [h8u-li] would sound like a mock-RP by an Aussie. > > [Incidentally we see here an example of what happens when an expression > containing '@' appears in Yahoo Groups - it gets followed by "...". > I'm reading via Yahoo Groups and copying/pasting/replying via email.]
Ooh, yucky. I imagine you worked out what it was. I'll attempt to remember this in future conversations with you.
> These differences between Australian dialects are interesting. I have > a half-baked idea to write a page of notes on them for my website.
Sounds interesting if you ever get around to it.
> I'm not surprised that your "holy" is different from mine since both > are common, but I am surprised that you seem unfamiliar with [h*u-li].
Maybe I'm not listening carefully enough...
> > > [oo in school] > > > For me it's "higher" in the terminology you used previously, i.e. the > > > jaws are a little more closed. If you transcribe "wool" as [wul] then > > > I might transcribe "school" as, I suppose, [skw=:l]. > > > > I think you cannot get a vowel higher than [u]. If you can, the vowel is > > generally transcribed as [U] > > Oops, did I get "higher" and "lower" mixed up? I don't find that > terminology very descriptive, I'm afraid. All I mean to say is that > the jaws are a little more closed for "fool" than they are for "foot". > > [A] is very low while [u] is very high - Is this correct?
Yes, that's right.
> > With 'wool', there's the added complexity of a diphthong: there's a > > schwa inserted between the /w/ and the /u/ (or else the /u/ is > > pronounced as a (potentially rounded) [@]). > > There isn't for me. Definitely [wul] with the same vowel as in "put".
That sounds like a feat to pronounce.
> > However, I would say that 'full' and 'fool' were, indeed, distinguished > > purely by length. I don't think I can get a higher vowel than the one > > in there, so that's probably [u]. > > [u] equals [w=] (syllabic [w]). This is one thing I'm very confident > on, as I've been told so directly. So "fool" for me is [fu:l].
Okay, I'm happy with that.
> The vowel in "foot" is slightly more open (lower, I think).
That tends to be the normal vowel there, I think, and would be [U].
> > The vowel in 'boot' is more fronted (and long), but I wouldn't say > > it was diphthongal. > > Agreed. I don't know of any dialects where it's diphthogonal.
People tend to claim the Australian /u:/ is pronounced more like [@u:]. Tristan.