The "How Do You Pronounce X" Thread

[jal]

¹I notice that in non-careful speech I have an annoyingly strong tendency to drop the [ʁ] here.

Well, you're dropping the /r/ in "wurst" as well, so...


JAL

[Travis B.]

¹I notice that in non-careful speech I have an annoyingly strong tendency to drop the [ʁ] here.

Well, you're dropping the /r/ in "wurst" as well, so...

I suspect rhotic English-speakers may have a bit of trouble telling apart [ʊɐ̯] and [ə].

[/ˌnɐˈɾɛndɚduːd/]

¹I notice that in non-careful speech I have an annoyingly strong tendency to drop the [ʁ] here.

Well, you're dropping the /r/ in "wurst" as well, so...

I suspect rhotic English-speakers may have a bit of trouble telling apart [ʊɐ̯] and [ə].

I can pronounce the difference if I put my mind to it, but [ə] feels much more natural in my mouth and is what I find myself gravitating towards.

[Travis B.]

In the English here the loan-morpheme -wurst is simply merged with worst and pronounced rhotically with the NURSE vowel just like it.

[Travis B.]

How do you guys really pronounce Illinois and milk? I normally pronounce the former with DRESS, even though from paying attention to everyone around me it seems many people pronounce it with KIT as spelled (even though I was sure that the DRESS pronunciation was the 'correct' one for the dialect here before), and when speaking carefully I pronounce the latter with KIT, but it seems that if I don't pay attention to my own speech I actually pronounce it with DRESS (as I was already aware of my mother in particular pronouncing it).

[bradrn]

How do you guys really pronounce Illinois and milk? I normally pronounce the former with DRESS

I don’t really have a native pronunciation of Illinois, but I’ve noticed this before in other words:

I asked because I have:

miracle [ˈme̞ɻʷɵkʰu]
illustrate [ˈe̞ɫəs̞t̞͡ʂʷæ͡ɪt]
irritate [ˈe̞ɻʷətˢæ͡ɪtˢ]

And I was wondering whether anyone else had that distinctive /ɪ/-lowering.

[Travis B.]

It seems that historical KIT before /l/ is unstable for me, because when I try to speak naturally I often pronounce it as something like [əɤ̯], but when I try to speak carefully it either merges with KIT before /l/ as [ɨɯ̯], as in milk or vanilla, or DRESS before /l/ as [ɜɤ̯], as in Illinois.

Edit: Note that this does not apply when a stressed vowel is follows by /l/ in final position; e.g. pill unambiguously has KIT and bell unambiguously has DRESS.

[jal]

Funny, "milk" with DRESS would sound a lot like the Dutch cognate "melk". (And yes, that "l" is subject to l-vocalization in everyday speech.)


JAL

[alice]

"Illinois rhymes with Lois", goes the jingle we all learned at school¹.

¹This is not entirely correct.

[zompist]

How do you guys really pronounce Illinois and milk? I normally pronounce the former with DRESS, even though from paying attention to everyone around me it seems many people pronounce it with KIT as spelled (even though I was sure that the DRESS pronunciation was the 'correct' one for the dialect here before), and when speaking carefully I pronounce the latter with KIT, but it seems that if I don't pay attention to my own speech I actually pronounce it with DRESS (as I was already aware of my mother in particular pronouncing it).

I have [ɪ] in both.

However, my best friend, raised in the same suburb, says [mɛlk]. (Or maybe [mɛlq]. The k gets backed after an l.)

[alice]

Milk in Scottish accents is typically /mʌlk/, with a strongly velarised /l/, a near-rhyme of sulk.

[bradrn]

Milk in Scottish accents is typically /mʌlk/, with a strongly velarised /l/, a near-rhyme of sulk.

Ah yes, the pesky Scottish /ɪ/, which has caused me trouble before;

Today at the hardware store the man at the counter suggested that I buy a [dɾɐːw]. I expressed confusion, so he clarified that what he thought I should buy was a [dɾɐːw]. Eventually I just asked him to spell it out, and it clicked — the word he was saying was drill!

[alice]

You remind me of when my beloved and I met some of your countrypersons many years ago on holiday, and they had no idea what a /fɑɹəm/ was; it's the usual Scottish pronciation of a /fæ:m/.

[bradrn]

You remind me of when my beloved and I met some of your countrypersons many years ago on holiday, and they had no idea what a /fɑɹəm/ was; it's the usual Scottish pronciation of a /fæ:m/.

Well, I’ve never heard of /fæːm/ being a valid English word before; presuming you mean farm, the usual Australian pronunciation is something like [fɐ̈ːm].

[Travis B.]

You remind me of when my beloved and I met some of your countrypersons many years ago on holiday, and they had no idea what a /fɑɹəm/ was; it's the usual Scottish pronciation of a /fæ:m/.

Is /fæ:m/ how Scots perceive the AusE pronunciaton of farm, as bradrn says?

[alice]

You remind me of when my beloved and I met some of your countrypersons many years ago on holiday, and they had no idea what a /fɑɹəm/ was; it's the usual Scottish pronciation of a /fæ:m/.

Is /fæ:m/ how Scots perceive the AusE pronunciaton of farm, as bradrn says?

If you take me as characteristic of "Scots", then yes I should probably have used [broad phonetic] rather than /phonemic/ transcriptions there.

[bradrn]

You remind me of when my beloved and I met some of your countrypersons many years ago on holiday, and they had no idea what a /fɑɹəm/ was; it's the usual Scottish pronciation of a /fæ:m/.

Is /fæ:m/ how Scots perceive the AusE pronunciaton of farm, as bradrn says?

If you take me as characteristic of "Scots", then yes I should probably have used [broad phonetic] rather than /phonemic/ transcriptions there.

Ah! Of course, you’re TRAP–BATH unsplit. That makes sense now.

[anteallach]

How do you guys really pronounce Illinois and milk? I normally pronounce the former with DRESS, even though from paying attention to everyone around me it seems many people pronounce it with KIT as spelled (even though I was sure that the DRESS pronunciation was the 'correct' one for the dialect here before), and when speaking carefully I pronounce the latter with KIT, but it seems that if I don't pay attention to my own speech I actually pronounce it with DRESS (as I was already aware of my mother in particular pronouncing it).

Both with KIT.

The variation in milk seems to go back to Middle English, and the OE forms had eo.

[anteallach]

Is /fæ:m/ how Scots perceive the AusE pronunciaton of farm, as bradrn says?

If you take me as characteristic of "Scots", then yes I should probably have used [broad phonetic] rather than /phonemic/ transcriptions there.

Ah! Of course, you’re TRAP–BATH unsplit. That makes sense now.

So am I, but I'm still not sure what /fæ:m/ is meant to mean.

[bradrn]

If you take me as characteristic of "Scots", then yes I should probably have used [broad phonetic] rather than /phonemic/ transcriptions there.

Ah! Of course, you’re TRAP–BATH unsplit. That makes sense now.

So am I, but I'm still not sure what /fæ:m/ is meant to mean.

Well, the vowel that I usually see transcribed as /æ/ is in Scottish English usually pronounced as something more like [ɐ]. (Unlike other unsplit varieties where it really is [æ].) So it makes sense that Australian [ɐː] might be heard by a Scot as their TRAP–BATH vowel and thus be transcribed as /æː/.