Re: Hear Me! Hear Me!

Tristan McLeay wrote, quoting myself:

> > This shouldn't affect "there", however, which to most people I
> > know here in S.A., is definitely diphthonic.
>
> Which sounds very much English to me.
This surprises me - I'd've thought of pure vowel "there" as being more
English (of course "English" is a set of multiple dialects) - but OK,
I accept this, having not heard enough Victorians to debate it. I know
people do pronounce it both ways.

> > 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.
It is known (I heard this factoid mentioned on the radio) that South
Australians tend to slur their /l/s more than other Australians do, on
average, e.g. rhyming "girl" with "smell". My _girl_ and _smell_ don't
rhyme, but for other people around here they often do.

> 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/.
As this doesn't correspond to my idiolect I don't have anything to add.

> I have been led to understand that the vowel in the word 'get' is /E/.
[...]
> /e/ is generally used to transcribe the sound in 'day' when used in
> an English context.
I'm confident that [e] is the vowel in 'get' and that [E] is the wider
vowel. I'm just not confident about the boundaries between [E] and
other vowels.

> Could be. I should note that my /{/ and your /&/ refer to the same
> vowel.
That's because you use pure SAMPA while I generally use the cross
between SAMPA and Kirsch that is often used on this list. Probably
confusing, but it was here that I picked it up.

> 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:].
My biggest long-running dispute with the IPA is that, as I understand
it, [u] is equivalent to a syllabic [w=] whereas [u-] is the vowel in
"do" or "through". I find it silly that such a distinct pair of vowels
(certainly more distinct than [i] is from [I]) are distinguished only
by a diacritic.

I have no idea what [8] is, but you may well be right in that the "o"
in "spoke" could well be [8u-].

> > 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.
In other words you only have the first half of my rule.

> To me, pronouncing 'coat' and 'coal' with the same vowel makes the
> speaker sound British or American or something...
Yes, agreed. I'd label this as British.

> > 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'.
Well, I was taking about the phoneme represented by the "o" in that
word, and was mostly ignoring the "l". Different realisations of /l/
after a vowel are so subject to individual variations that I'm not
going to attempt to generalise about them.

> What vowel is [O] being used to represent here? The sound of the word
> 'court' or 'cot' or 'coat' or 'coal'?
"cot" = [kOt] and the vowel is also present in "coal".
This is the transciption I am led to understand is correct.

> For me, both 'soul' and 'solo' have the same first vowel phonetically;
Whereas for me they don't, and both variants are common. Presumably
for you, "holy" and "wholly" sound identical? For me they are [h8u-li]
and [hOuli] respectively.

> Also, is the vowel in 'school' for you more like a long version of 'put'
> or the vowel of 'moot'? (For me, the former.)
Like 'put' only tighter (i.e. pure [u] I'd say); my voice sample
demonstrates this vowel with the word "foolish". I associate this
pronunciation with Adelaide, and the 'moot' alternative with Sydney.

Adrian.

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