Re: Hear Me! Hear Me!

Aleks koch wrote, quoting myself:

> > - Whatever people consider to be interesting, from a phonetics point
> > of view."
>
> Well ignoring the fact that I would never use a grammer remotely
> similiar to that...I find it interesting that the way I pronounce the
Good idea to ignore the actual content, I think, especially as some of
it alludes to in-jokes that are not relevant here :-)

> words "There" "World" "Our" "Morgan" are basically the same as you
> did. Most of the other words are differently pronounced though, and
> in truth the only thing similiar is that I pronounce an "r" in those
> words in the same way you did.
Do you consider the vowel-phrase in "our"/"devour" to be a triphthong?
Seems to me that it 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]). I'm not sure
which of these two variants is considered "pure" [&], or how they are
distinguished in narrow transcription, but in practise it doesn't
matter as they are phonemically identical (and most people probably
wouldn't notice the difference). It still interests me, though].

Its intermediate vowel isn't [u] because it doesn't involve moving
the lips. It seems to involve a tightening in the back of the mouth.
This intermediate vowel may be lost entirely in casual speech.

And finally, it finishes with a [@]. That's three vowels, hence a
triphthong, unless I'm mistaken somewhere.

My use of phonetic symbols comes with my standard disclaimer that I
know not of what I speak.

Adrian.

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