Re: CHAT: IPA Question

On Tue, Jan 28, 2003 at 09:39:34PM -0800, Joseph Fatula wrote:
[snip]
> They don't for the reason that you'll probably find shortly, when reading
> the message I just sent.  Spoken English has wide variety in its sounds,
> especially vowels.  Not only is one vowel pronounced differently in a
> different region, but there are often different categories.  Like around
> here (California), I hear people saying "marry" and "merry", and they sound
> the same.
Aha! Californian... that's why I thought it sounded familiar. :-) In my
idiolect, the only difference between "marry" and "merry" is vowel length
([m&:rI] vs. [m&rI]).

> Same goes for "rot" and "wrought".
Again, vowel length distinguishes them in my idiolect.

> Because English (like many languages) does not share a single phonology,
> the sort of thing you're looking for is hard to make without breaking it
> up by region.  And I don't have a clue what categories are distinguished
> in many English-speaking regions.
Just about every language exhibits this phenomenon, I'd wager. Even within
Mandarin itself, there are significant differences in both consonants and
vowels. For example, in Beijing you hear a lot of final /n/ realized by
rhoticizing the preceding vowel; so /wan2/ (to play) -> [wa~r=]. But in my
hometown, Mandarin speakers say [wan2]. Also, mainland speakers seem to
distinguish between /j/ and /z/ (Pinyin) but in my Mandarin idiolect they
are both [ts] (unaspirated). And the odd (to me!) varieties of sibilants
in Pinyin are all [s] to me.

Even in Malay (cousin of Indonesian), there are regional vowel
differences. The "official" (pedantic) pronunciation guide recommends all
final /a/'s to be pronounced as [a], but around the capital, you'll almost
always hear people pronounced final /a/ as [@] or even [@:]. The older
folks pronounce initial /me/ as [ma], but just about everybody else says
[m@]; some younger people even elide the /e/ altogether, so that /melawat/
becomes [mlawat] or even [mlaw@t] (this last being officially criticized
as incorrect, but people still do it regardless).


T

--
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