Re: sending mail to the list
| From: | Matt Pearson <pearson@...> |
|---|
| Date: | Wednesday, May 2, 2001, 23:12 |
|---|
David Peterson wrote:
> In a message dated 5/2/01 3:03:23 PM, jaspax@U.WASHINGTON.EDU writes:
>
> << Anyway, I wrote to say (1) that both "put" and "book" have /U/ (the lax
> sound), and (2) that it doesn't matter since the distinction between /u/
> and /U/ may be gone in 20 years anyway. >>
>
> I realized at the time that it was kind of a joke, yet...as I sounded it
> out and did over and over again, I found I do have two different vowels in
> "put" and "book": my lips are rounded with "put" and they definitely are not
> with "book". Did I just invent this when I saw that? Does any other native
> English speaker have this? Any native Southern California English speaker?
Based on my experience teaching phonetic transcription to undergraduates at
UCLA, it seems to me that /U/ is becoming unrounded in Southern California
English, bringing it closer to the Japanese /u/. (In fact, some of my students
treat "book" as virtually homophonous with "buck".) But why you should have
carried this de-rounding tendency further with "book" than with "put", I don't
know. I suspect that you're imagining things. Either that, or you're more than
usually sensitive to the phonetic 'bleeding' from the following consonant sound.
Matt.
Reply