finlay wrote:Travis B. wrote:YngNghymru wrote:If I have to make a distinction, I pronounce aural as [awral] or [aural], pretty much as written. Oral is always [O:ral] and so's aural, most of the time.
That is the thing - I
could pronounce
aural as [ˈɒːʁˤɯ(ː)], but that would just seem like a horrible spelling pronunciation to me, as I have, say,
laurel [ˈʟ̞ɔːʁˤɯ(ː)]~[ˈɰɔːʁˤɯ(ː)],
Laurence [ˈʟ̞ɔːʁˤɨ̃nts]~[ˈʟ̞ɔːʁˤn̩ts]~[ˈɰɔːʁˤɨ̃nts]~[ˈɰɔːʁˤn̩ts], and
Lauren [ˈʟ̞ɔːʁˤɨ̃(ː)n]~[ˈʟ̞ɔːʁˤn̩(ː)]~[ˈɰɔːʁˤɨ̃(ː)n]~[ˈɰɔːʁˤn̩(ː)] without [ɒː] in any of those cases, ever.
I'm starting to wonder whether if I met you I'd think you had a speech impediment...
How I speak is not a speech impediment*; rather, it is basically the traditional working-class Milwaukee dialect as picked up by middle-class suburban kids and then run with, with newer sound changes spreading throughout the Inland North region being piled on top thereof. I
could speak General American if I chose to, aside from my /r/ and /l/, where even in my most formal speech I do not pronounce them as in GA, but I am just too used to GA being the speech of
foreigners (to someone from southeastern Wisconsin, anyone from outside southeastern Wisconsin**) and stuffy middle-aged and older people (and
very stuffy younger people); I am too used to speaking in a fashion that I find familiar rather than distant and foreign and which, amongst younger people from a similar social background, immediately marks one as being part of
us** rather than
them. Conversely, out here in Maryland, I find little reason to change how I speak, as how I speak at work and like is understood perfectly well by the people out here, and I personally identify little with a greater American polity and hence little with the people out here.
* When I have spoken German or, when it had not gotten horribly rusty, Japanese, my pronounciation of English really does not affect such much, aside from tending to still aspirate fortis plosives in Japanese and still nasalizing vowels as if I were speaking English, whereas if how I spoke English were due to a speech impediment that would be a different story...
** As a whole, traditional southeastern Wisconsin society is what I would call a
closed society on multiple levels - it is the kind of thing that people who were not born into it or at least who did not grow up in it are regarded as essentially outside it, regardless of their position within American society as a whole, and furthermore
where one was born into it is essentially immutable in the bigger scheme of things*****. Some of the suburbs, such as the one I am from, are such but even moreso, where in many cases many of the people who are really "inside" such have
parents who knew each other in school, and which very well may have gone to many of the same schools as oneself.
*** Well, that depends - amongst working-class Milwaukee people, I still sound like a middle-class suburban kid, and for that matter people have been able to pick out
which suburb I am from how I speak...
***** By that I mean that social position is largely not determined by wealth but rather by where in society one grew up, with social mobility being essentially limited both vertically and horizontally,
in both directions rather than the typical being "easy" to go down socially but hard to go up socially for American society - for instance, a middle class person without money is still a middle class person, and will not be truly accepted by working class Milwaukeeans.