Re: Sorting out those phonetics.

Adrian Morgan wrote:
>First, Kristian: you state somewhere that you've been to
>Brisbane, which is _way_ over the other side of the
>country. Sources that claim negligible phonetic variation
>in this country should be taken with a truckful of salt.
>It's only true when compared with, say, England. It isn't
>at all true in an absolute sense. (And even at a given
>locality we're a very mixed bunch, which I guess can be
>traced to a high rate of interstate migration.)
>
>Basically, if your observations are based on Queensland
>vowels, they are certainly not reliable. And many of
>them, I can see at a glance that they are not correct.
>I most emphatically do not mean to be rude and/or
>dismissive, but I can't consider any statement to be
>authorative unless it's written by someone who has
>spoken to me directly.
No worries... I had a funny feeling there were dialectal
differences within Australia. I only posted what I knew based
on my experiences. All my Aussie friends were from Brisbane.

-----<snip>-----
>> Probably because Australian English does not have the
>> vowel quality [I]. Where other English dialects have
>> [I], Australia uses [i].
>
>Not true, I say! 'Eat' and 'It' are distinctly different.
Of course they are! Though in Brisbane, its length that's
distinctive, not quality. I heard them as [i:t] and [it]
respectively. Actually, on second thought, perhaps 'eat' was [ijt]
with a [j] offglide, or maybe it had a centralized onglide [_@i:t].
I seem to remember a somewhat glide-like quality in that word.

>I know that in Tasmania they use [i] in place of [I],
>so maybe it's the same in Queensland.
Perhaps its an Eastern type of thing?

>> The glide in the diphthong if 'boat' is also
>> centralized (i.e. [u-]). Thus, 'boat' is in Australia
>> a [bOu-t]. I have heard some Australians front the
>> glide further to [y], hence [bOyt]. I suppose in some
>> Australian dialects, they would say [ba\u-t] <-here I
>> have replaced your [V] with [a\].
>
>The use of [O] in this context is peculiar to what we
>call the _strong_ Aus accent, which foreigners use to
>make fun of us (generally we don't mind). Some people
>do speak that way but it's not representative of the
>population. [Oy] sounds very peculiar to Queensland.
Which is probably why I heard it from my Brissie friends 8)

>Can we agree that it's somewhere in the vicinity of
>[@u] and leave the fine-tuning open-ended for now?
Dunno... I'm not the expert on Aussie dialects. I only know (or
think I know) what I have heard in Queensland. Though [@u] sounds
like something from Canada, not Australian: 'How [@b@ut] sailing
a [b@ut]...'

>> The Australian vowel system according to my texts and
>> what I have personally heard myself consists of the
>> following. (I don't know if there are dialectal
>> differences within Australia, but this is based on
>> what I have heard in Brisbane, Queensland):
>
>Well there are certainly dialectal differences. Your
>post is valuable I suppose as a discussion of the
>Queensland dialect, but it doesn't apply to me, sorry.
No worries... if I had been aware that there were strong dialectal
differences within Aussie-stralia, and if had I known you were from
the West, then I would not have bothered posting.

>> There is also [Ai], contrasting with [ai], as in;
>> 'Its a nice [dai] to[dAi]'.
>
>Sorry but these are same, both being what I suggested
>is [&I] and what you're claiming is [EI] (or [Ei]).
>
>> Don't you pronounce 'day' and 'die' differently? I'm
>> sure you do.
>
>Let's agree to let /&/ be [&] or [E], just for
>discussion's sake. Likewise let /a/ be [a] or [a\].
>
>day = /d&I/
>die = /daI/
This also looks Australian to me... 8)

-kristian- 8)