Zompist Bboard Again

All this reminds me of how I have a marginal minimal pair between pier [pʰɪ(ː)ʁˤ] and Peter [ˈpʰiʁ̩ˤ(ː)]. Of course the conventional analysis of these words is as /pɪər/ versus /ˈpiːtər/; the short stressed vowel in my Peter can be explained by the cheshirization of the missing /t/. Also, -/ɪər/ he...

I personally often lax the /iː/ in really to [ɪ], but it still does not merge with my /ɪ/ because that is centralized to [ɘ]. For me really doesn't have an /iː/: it has an /ɪə/ (often realised as a monophthong [ɪː]), c.f. the same vowel appearing in idea or theatre . I'm slightly less confident tha...

Being British, I don’t have the marry/merry/Mary merger, and I have DRESS (or MERRY) in both austerity and severity. I’m not aware of other pronunciations of either in normative BrE.

Cladistically, we are monkeys or monkey isn't a clade. That doesn't mean "monkey" couldn't have its own meaning in common usage, but I'd say all apes are tailless monkeys and that includes us. Humans are monkeys in the way that humans are reptiles. (I almost wrote "reptilians" -...

juvenilia: [ˌdʒʉvɘˈnɪliə] That supposedly normative pronunciation you mention (from Wiktionary?) seems very wrong, looking like an excessive classicalization by someone who loves Classical Latin vowel lengths too much. As if from the same kind of person who'd pronounce Cicero with /kɪk/ while speak...

What about Caribbean varieties? Or do you count the more divergent varieties there as not "Anglic", because they're creoles?

Another theory which came to mind for Halloween with LOT: it appears that it's most associated with roughly the same area as the Northern Cities Vowel Shift. Is it at all possible that the phonetic environment in that word (trisyllable, before /l/) was particularly unfavourable for the raising and d...

Don't a large proportion of Brits today have [a] for TRAP, with that pronunciation being found in SSBE, most northern EngE varieties, most Scottish English varieties, and most Welsh English varieties, with actual [æ] being limited to more old-fashioned RP varieties? I'd say [æ] is definitely the TR...

I have TRAP in Halloween , and am not aware of any other pronunciation in BrE. Those of you who have LOT: do you have it in any other -allow words (like hallow itself)? If not, I'm curious how the LOT pronunciation developed. I'm not familiar with catalpa . Wiktionary says it's "a variant of ca...

Shouldn't it be Ill-uh-nwa? Just because a place name is French in origin doesn't mean we pronounce like modern-day Parisians would. It's Algonquian. (Wiktionary derives it ultimately from Miami ilenweewa , glossed "he speaks the regular way".) There's little French about it other than th...

The Cockney accent traditionally has yod-dropping in the same environments as American English. After /n/, /d/, and /t/ in "new", "due", and "tube". I have read that while they still have yod-dropping after /n/ in words like "new", they are more likely to hav...

Well, yes. Welsh English lacks yod-dropping even in words like "rude", "flute", "Jew", and "chew". Doesn't it also have a feature by which /ju/ becomes a falling diphthong equivalent to Welsh iw ? Isn't that actually conservative, in that it was a falling dip...

Kuchigakatai wrote: ↑Fri Oct 14, 2022 9:57 am Picture, capture.

[kʃ pʃ] or [ktʃ ptʃ]?

Affricates in both.

Q : What's the most common term in English for a place where you can feel the wind blow, see trees, fields, clouds and sky, hear birds sing and do some jogging along the river? Is it proper to say " in the outskirts of the town "? Or do I have to say " in the countryside "? Than...

Is yod- coalescence in words like "tuba", "tube", and "due" the most common pronunciation in Britain these days? Cambridge online dictionary lists this for their British pronunciations of these words. In England, a clear [tj] or [dj] usually sounds old fashioned to me....

I don't believe that the typical English "bunched r" is accurately described as an uvular approximant, even pharyngealised, but we've been through this before. I looked it up, and apparently the "bunched r" is "bunched" in the palatal region, where my usual /r/ is &quo...

hwhatting wrote: ↑Wed Oct 05, 2022 2:06 pm

Rounin Ryuuji wrote: ↑Wed Oct 05, 2022 1:47 pm What does Jlabbach sound like? My instinct is something like ['jla.bax] or ['ʎa.bax].

['jla.bax]

Wikipedia gives [jəˈlɑbɑx] (with no source); I wonder if that's just an attempt by someone who finds initial [jl] unpronounceable?

Is the local dialect tonal?

Here is a recording of two pronunciations of final /r/, both in the word four , in my idiolect. The first one to me is an ordinary clear uvular approximant with a bit of pharyngealization. A "bunched /r/" as they call it. However, I'm not sure what the second is. Unlike the first, it is a...

As in 'chicken Kiev' - /ki:ef/. Apart from the final /f/, it's the old local pronunciation. Anglophone attempts at 'Kyiv' come out wrong, riming with 'sleeve'. I find the /kiːv/ take on Kyiv a bit weird, which was partly why I was asking. I've been tending to say /ˈkiːɪv/, basically the traditional...

Monaco as Italian for München is a good way of confusing travellers (or even perhaps football followers) of course. There was a question about German football team names on the BBC quiz Only Connect yesterday, and Victoria Coren Mitchell's pronunciation of Mönchengladbach sounded to me as if it sta...