Re: question on vowel tensing, fronting, backing, ect.

On Dec 11, 2007 3:43 PM, David J. Peterson <dedalvs@...> wrote:

> Where are you from?  This seems to be a general tendency of
> Southern Californian English, as is the [-in] pronunciations of
> "-ing".
>
I have [-iN] for -ing, and I've only rarely been to CA.  Born in MA, raised
in GA.

In addition to that, the vowels in "bang" and "ban" are phonetically
> indistinguishable from the vowel in "bane".  It seems to be a
> consequence of the nasal coda.  However, the vowel in "Ben"
> was unaffected.

IML, "bang", "ban", and "bane" are three separate vowels.   Well, the first
two are similar, but they feel different when I say them; I think it's just
the degree of diphthongalization.  Before [N], /&/ is highly diphthongalized
via an offglide, to something like [&j], while before [n], it's only barely
so, practically a pure [&].


It's interesting to note that there *is* a distinction for some in
> the [N] final words with the low vowels.  Marv Albert, for
> example.  He pronounces words that end in "-ang" as [&N],
> but pronounces the last name of NBA player Luol Deng as
> [EN].  I pronounce his last name and "dang" identically.

I agree with Albert on this one.   [dEN SaU piN]'s name does not rhyme with
[d&jN].  (Obviously that's the Anglicized pronunciation...)


--
Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...>

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