Sorting out those phonetics.

This is in response to Kristian's posts. Sorry about not
being able to thread properly. (I've responded to some
other people privately - they are quite free to quote my
responses.)

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. To this end I would certainly
consider suggestions for a phone appointment.

> [a:] -> cart, [a:] -> father, [&i] -> bait,
> Your confusing [E] and [&] again. In American,
> 'bait' is [beit]. In Australian, its [bait].
Definately not, b(ai)t = c(a)t ---> (ea)t

I'm now of the opinion that bait and bite end with
[I] not [i].

> 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.

I know that in Tasmania they use [i] in place of [I],
so maybe it's the same in Queensland.

> 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.
Can we agree that it's somewhere in the vicinity of
[@u] and leave the fine-tuning open-ended for now?

> 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.

> 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/

Again, I would consider arranging a phone appointment
should anyone be interested in settling these questions
once and for all.

Adrian.
http://www.flinders.edu.au