Zompist Bboard Again

TRAP: pal, fallow, gal, Al, Albert, altitude, calculator
DRESS: ell, fell, Celt
LOT/PALM: dal
THOUGHT: all, call, fall, gall, hall, mall, maul, alternate, fault, halt, paltry
STRUT: cull, hull
GOAT: old, coal, colt, hole, holt, poll, pole, poultry

I'm not sure about words like "ultimate" and "dulcimer". By spelling they should have STRUT, but there was probably a time when I had THOUGHT here. "cult" is another word in this set. I'm also not sure if "doll" is homophonous with "dal" or falls into the THOUGHT set.

jcb wrote: ↑Sun Jul 05, 2026 3:54 pm

bradrn wrote: ↑Sun Jul 05, 2026 3:28 pm

jcb wrote: ↑Sun Jul 05, 2026 3:03 pm What vowels do people have in the words "paltry" and "poultry"? I have /V/ (STRUT) in both, but just realized that the latter is probably a hypercorrection and should be /o/ (GOAT).

For poultry I have [o] (giving it a lexical set name is hard because it precedes /l/). I wouldn’t say that paltry is part of my active vocabulary but I think I’d say it with [æ].

Do you distinguish "hall, hull, hole/pole, pull, pool"?

Yes, I think all five are distinct, though hall/hole and pull/pool are distinguished only by length.

EDIT: It’s maybe worth mentioning that ‘pole’ and ‘pull’ are very similar too ([ow] vs [ʊw]). I don’t know how robust all these distinctions actually are in casual speech.

I have:

TRAP /æl/ [ɛɤ̯]: pal, fallow, gal, Al, Albert, altitude, calculator
DRESS /ɛl/ [ɜɤ̯]: ell, fell, Celt
LOT /ɑl/ [aɤ̯]: doll ('dal' isn't a word in my native vocabulary that I really know the pronunciation of)
THOUGHT /ɔl/ [ɒo̯]: all, call, fall, gall, hall, mall, maul, alternate, fault, halt, paltry, ultimate, ultra-, multiple, multi-, bulb, gulf, mulch*
STRUT /ʌl/ [ʌɤ̯]: cull, hull, dulcimer, mulch*
GOAT /oʊl/ [o̞ʊ̯]: old, coal, colt, hole, holt, poll, pole, poultry

* This one can go either way, but in careful speech tends to have STRUT.

jal wrote: ↑Wed Jul 01, 2026 3:04 am Ok, so I think we can conclude that English is unable to properly convey the German term, lacking a way to distinguish "producing wool" from "having woolly fur".


JAL

WRONG! You mean 'succinctly', not 'properly'.

Richard W wrote: ↑Sun Jul 05, 2026 4:47 pmI have /pɔ:ltrɪ/ and /pəʊltrɪ/, with neutralisation of /ɪ/ and /i/ in the final syllables. I wouldn't understand jcb's /pʌltrɪ/.

That's close to what I thought these words should be pronounced (in BrE), so I'm glad there's at least one native speaker that agrees with my internal pronunciation :D.


JAL

Richard W wrote: ↑Sun Jul 05, 2026 7:02 pmWRONG! You mean 'succinctly', not 'properly'.

Well, that depends on whether you aim for a 1:1 term. We can all explain a term or use multiple words of course...


JAL

jal wrote: ↑Mon Jul 06, 2026 3:40 am

Richard W wrote: ↑Sun Jul 05, 2026 7:02 pmWRONG! You mean 'succinctly', not 'properly'.

Well, that depends on whether you aim for a 1:1 term. We can all explain a term or use multiple words of course...

Since when is translation ever 1:1?

bradrn wrote: ↑Mon Jul 06, 2026 5:00 amSince when is translation ever 1:1?

That's not the point here. The original question was how to best translate "eierlegende Wollmilchsau", and various people came up with various approaches, and I think nobody wanted to do pull a "egg-laying, wool and milk providing pig".


JAL

jcb wrote: ↑Sun Jul 05, 2026 3:03 pm What vowels do people have in the words "paltry" and "poultry"? I have /V/ (STRUT) in both, but just realized that the latter is probably a hypercorrection and should be /o/ (GOAT).

Both have the pre-/l/ allophone of my GOAT (which is something like [öo]).

For the words in Travis's post I have:
TRAP: dal, pal, fallow, gal, Al, Albert, altitude, calculator
DRESS: ell, fell, Celt
THOUGHT: all, call, fall, gall, hall, mall, maul
STRUT: ultimate, ultra-, multiple, multi-, bulb, gulf, cull, hull, dulcimer, mulch
GOAT: doll, old, coal, colt, hole, holt, alternate, fault, halt, paltry, poll, pole, poultry

I have sometimes wondered whether I have a slight residual distinction between the historically GOAT words and the historically LOT or THOUGHT words in the last list. But I think I don't: I don't have any intuition for the distinction and I've tried recording them and the vowel really does seem to be the same.

jal wrote: ↑Mon Jul 06, 2026 3:39 am

Richard W wrote: ↑Sun Jul 05, 2026 4:47 pmI have /pɔ:ltrɪ/ and /pəʊltrɪ/, with neutralisation of /ɪ/ and /i/ in the final syllables. I wouldn't understand jcb's /pʌltrɪ/.

That's close to what I thought these words should be pronounced (in BrE), so I'm glad there's at least one native speaker that agrees with my internal pronunciation .

My pronunciations of paltry and poultry are direct analogues of Richard W's, just with NAE phonemes and Milwaukee dialect phones.

I have /lɔs/ [ʟ̞ɒs̟] for los in Los Angeles and las in Las Vegas even though if I borrowed the latter from Spanish I would have /lɑs/* [ʟ̞as̟] for las and even though my parents do differentiate the two in this fashion. The only real explanation I can think of is that I dialect-borrowed the pronunciation from cot-caught-merged varieties and that I mapped cot-caught-merged /ɑ/ to /ɔ/ as I tend to perceive [ɑ] not adjacent to /r w h kw gw/ as closer to my /ɔ/ [ɒ] than my /ɑ/* [a].

* This is using the standard NAE phoneme /ɑ/, ignoring my marginal phonemic split between [a] and [ɑ] as reflected by pom [pʰã(ː)m] versus palm [pʰɑ̃(ː)m].

Does anyone else have this?

TRAP: Al, altitude, calculator, fallow, gal

• 'Al' as in the Arabic article is sometimes PALM. The given name is always TRAP

DRESS: Celt, dress, ell
PALM: daal, halt

• I had to look up what a 'dal' was, then i realized it's just the other half of 'mung daal'. 'Halt' takes this vowel because i see it as a German loanword

THOUGHT: all, alternate, call, doll, fall, fault, gall, hall, mall, maul, paltry

• Sometimes this vowel rises to FOOT before approximants. Often 'doll' is PALM

STRUT: cull, ultimate
FOOT: dulcimer, hull, poultry

• I sometimes pronounce 'ultimate' like this too. The distinct vowel in 'cull' comes from me learning the word a bit later and an attempt to distinguish it from 'kill'. It's tricky for me to maintain a FOOT-STRUT distinction before /l/ and /w/

GOAT: coal, colt, hole, holt, pole, poll

• I cannot distinguish THOUGHT and GOAT before /l/ no matter how i try

Starbeam wrote: ↑Fri Jul 31, 2026 2:23 pm PALM: daal, halt

• I had to look up what a 'dal' was, then i realized it's just the other half of 'mung daal'. 'Halt' takes this vowel because i see it as a German loanword

Apparently halt is both a native English word, from OE healtian, meaning 'limp', and a loanword originating in ENHG (imperative halt of ENHG halten) via Middle French (a doublet of native English hold incidentally), meaning 'stop'.

Travis B. wrote: ↑Fri Jul 31, 2026 2:31 pm

Starbeam wrote: ↑Fri Jul 31, 2026 2:23 pm PALM: daal, halt

• I had to look up what a 'dal' was, then i realized it's just the other half of 'mung daal'. 'Halt' takes this vowel because i see it as a German loanword

Apparently halt is both a native English word, from OE healtian, meaning 'limp', and a loanword originating in ENHG (imperative halt of ENHG halten) via Middle French (a doublet of native English hold incidentally), meaning 'stop'.

Looking it up myself, i don't think i use the inherited definitions of "halt", so i see it more as a loanword. Wiktionary lists the "limping/ wavering" definitions as archaic. And i've always been able to notice it's a cognate of "hold"

Starbeam wrote: ↑Sun Aug 02, 2026 7:59 am

Travis B. wrote: ↑Fri Jul 31, 2026 2:31 pm

Starbeam wrote: ↑Fri Jul 31, 2026 2:23 pm PALM: daal, halt

• I had to look up what a 'dal' was, then i realized it's just the other half of 'mung daal'. 'Halt' takes this vowel because i see it as a German loanword

Apparently halt is both a native English word, from OE healtian, meaning 'limp', and a loanword originating in ENHG (imperative halt of ENHG halten) via Middle French (a doublet of native English hold incidentally), meaning 'stop'.

Looking it up myself, i don't think i use the inherited definitions of "halt", so i see it more as a loanword. Wiktionary lists the "limping/ wavering" definitions as archaic. And i've always been able to notice it's a cognate of "hold"

The verb halt meaning 'limp' or 'waver' may be dated, but are the derived words halting and haltingly?

Travis B. wrote: ↑Sun Aug 02, 2026 8:20 am The verb halt meaning 'limp' or 'waver' may be dated, but are the derived words halting and haltingly?

To me, they've always fitted well with the sense of 'stop', with a more specific sense of 'prone to stop'.

Travis B. wrote: ↑Sun Aug 02, 2026 8:20 am The verb halt meaning 'limp' or 'waver' may be dated, but are the derived words halting and haltingly?

No, but i would still not associate them with the inherited word and probably only pronounce them with THOUGHT for the same reason i accidentally put it in "Las (Spanish article)".

Would native speakers here normally say 'as big as a barn door' or 'big as a barn door'? Does the grammatical rôle of the phrase affect the choice? I normally say the former, and find the latter jarrinɡ when I encounter it.

Richard W wrote: ↑Fri Aug 07, 2026 3:32 am Would native speakers here normally say 'as big as a barn door' or 'big as a barn door'? Does the grammatical rôle of the phrase affect the choice? I normally say the former, and find the latter jarrinɡ when I encounter it.

To me whether it is used attributively or predicatively matters -- the first as is needed attributively but not predicatively.

Is anyone else here aware of people existing with MOUTH pronounced as [ɑ] or [ɑː]? I sporadically hear (and produce) that here, and today in a meeting I heard a coworker twice in close succession pronounce MOUTH as [ɑ(ː)], e.g. in sounds [sɑːnts] (that is one of the exact words he said). Note that I have not observed a merger with FATHER/LOT, as normally here that is [a(ː)].