A few US city pronunciation questions

[linguoboy]

I myself tend strongly towards merging las and los as [ʟ̞ɒs]~[ɰɒs] (as in Los Angeles [ˌʟ̞ɒsˈɛ̃ː(n)d̥ʒ̊ɯ̞ːɰɨs]~[ˌɰɒsˈɛ̃ː(n)d̥ʒ̊ɯ̞ːɰɨs] and Las Vegas [ˌʟ̞ɒsˈv̥eːɡɨs]~[ˌɰɒsˈv̥eːɡɨs]), even though I may use the pronunciation [ʟ̞as]~[ɰas] for las in a place name when I have actually heard it pronounced with [ɑ(ː)] (or fronter) by someone.

Oddly, these are both exceptions to the rule for me. I suspect I've been influenced by the local pronunciations in a way that I just haven't been for smaller places. Similarly, having being to both Colorado and Nevada, I now pronounce both names with stressed /{/ rather than the /A/ demanded by my native (cot-caught unmerged--despite growing up west of Illinois) dialect.

[Travis B.]

To me, [ʟ̞ɛs]~[ɰɛs] (as in lass) just does not sound right for las, even if it is analogous to a local pronunciation with [æ(ː)]...

[finlay]

I say /las/ and /lɔs/, so the habit of many Americans of saying /lɑs/ for "las" annoys me, because your /ɑ/ maps to my /ɔ/... roughly....

[Travis B.]

I say /las/ and /lɔs/, so the habit of many Americans of saying /lɑs/ for "las" annoys me, because your /ɑ/ maps to my /ɔ/... roughly....

The key word here is roughly. Going directly between English dialects, mapping any one realized low or low-mid vowel to anyone else's low or low-mid vowel(s) without explicit reference to lexical sets is difficult, shall we say, especially when speaking of groups like Americans (and they are not known for their dialectal variation either)...

In this case, for instance, referring to synchronic vowel phonemes (and excluding any vowel length muckery) your /a/ likely maps to my /ɛ/ and my /a/ corresponding to the PALM set (aside from where spelling pronunciation has changed it to /ɒl/), and your /ɔ/ likely maps to both my /ɒ/ and my /a/ corresponding to the LOT set...

... but reference to historical vowel phonemes does not seem to make quite as much sense for place names borrowed from Spanish - mapping original Spanish /a/ to anything other than a low vowel just seems odd to me, especially when the Spanish names were not borrowed into historical English varieties ancestral to present day ones to which one could analyze vowels in a reasonably diachronic manner...

[bulbaquil]

I'm cot/caught merged:

Los Angeles: [ˌɫɒsˈæ̃ndʒɫ̩əs]~[ˌɫɒsˈæ̃ndʒɫ̩ɨs]
Las Vegas: [ˌɫɒsˈveɪɡɨs]

I.e., the vowel for both "los" and "las" in Spanish-origin-but-English-language place names is that of the LOT set (which, for me, is the same as that of the THOUGHT set).

If I'm trying to pronounce them the Spanish way, it's usually something like [ˌlɔˈsançɛlɛs] and [ˌlasˈβɛɡas]~[ˌlasˈʋeɣas].

[finlay]

I say /las/ and /lɔs/, so the habit of many Americans of saying /lɑs/ for "las" annoys me, because your /ɑ/ maps to my /ɔ/... roughly....

The key word here is roughly. Going directly between English dialects, mapping any one realized low or low-mid vowel to anyone else's low or low-mid vowel(s) without explicit reference to lexical sets is difficult, shall we say, especially when speaking of groups like Americans (and they are not known for their dialectal variation either)...

In this case, for instance, referring to synchronic vowel phonemes (and excluding any vowel length muckery) your /a/ likely maps to my /ɛ/ and my /a/ corresponding to the PALM set (aside from where spelling pronunciation has changed it to /ɒl/), and your /ɔ/ likely maps to both my /ɒ/ and my /a/ corresponding to the LOT set...

... but reference to historical vowel phonemes does not seem to make quite as much sense for place names borrowed from Spanish - mapping original Spanish /a/ to anything other than a low vowel just seems odd to me, especially when the Spanish names were not borrowed into historical English varieties ancestral to present day ones to which one could analyze vowels in a reasonably diachronic manner...

... the fuck are you talking about

All i'm saying is that if I hear /ɑ/ from an American, I map it to /ɔ/ (because this is the general case), which is why it bothers me when it's also used for the PALM set. (In the case of Spanish /o/, it's the matching of that to a low vowel in English which bothers me)

aka how dare you have a father-bother merger.

Also, [ɫɔ̽ˈsandʒəɫi:z̥] and [ɫasˈve:gəs] – I suppose it's probably also interesting that I say /iz/ on the end of Los Angeles, instead of /əs/, which is what you others do. Dunno what that is or whether I'd be laughed out of town for it in America....

[finlay]

I'm cot/caught merged:

Los Angeles: [ˌɫɒsˈæ̃ndʒɫ̩əs]~[ˌɫɒsˈæ̃ndʒɫ̩ɨs]
Las Vegas: [ˌɫɒsˈveɪɡɨs]

I.e., the vowel for both "los" and "las" in Spanish-origin-but-English-language place names is that of the LOT set (which, for me, is the same as that of the THOUGHT set).

yeah this is actually father-bother because "las" would be the PALM set...

[Travis B.]

I say /las/ and /lɔs/, so the habit of many Americans of saying /lɑs/ for "las" annoys me, because your /ɑ/ maps to my /ɔ/... roughly....

The key word here is roughly. Going directly between English dialects, mapping any one realized low or low-mid vowel to anyone else's low or low-mid vowel(s) without explicit reference to lexical sets is difficult, shall we say, especially when speaking of groups like Americans (and they are not known for their dialectal variation either)...

In this case, for instance, referring to synchronic vowel phonemes (and excluding any vowel length muckery) your /a/ likely maps to my /ɛ/ and my /a/ corresponding to the PALM set (aside from where spelling pronunciation has changed it to /ɒl/), and your /ɔ/ likely maps to both my /ɒ/ and my /a/ corresponding to the LOT set...

... but reference to historical vowel phonemes does not seem to make quite as much sense for place names borrowed from Spanish - mapping original Spanish /a/ to anything other than a low vowel just seems odd to me, especially when the Spanish names were not borrowed into historical English varieties ancestral to present day ones to which one could analyze vowels in a reasonably diachronic manner...

... the fuck are you talking about

How English low and low-mid vowels are a mess, crossdialectically, in short.

All i'm saying is that if I hear /ɑ/ from an American, I map it to /ɔ/ (because this is the general case), which is why it bothers me when it's also used for the PALM set. (In the case of Spanish /o/, it's the matching of that to a low vowel in English which bothers me)

aka how dare you have a father-bother merger.

Were los a COT word to me, you'd be even more thrilled that I'd use a vowel closely approximating your TRAP vowel.

[ɫɔ̽ˈsandʒəɫi:z̥]

[iː] in the last syllable of Los Angeles... What? o.O

[linguoboy]

[iː] in the last syllable of Los Angeles... What? o.O

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e41ygKJ3ABk

[Travis B.]

[iː] in the last syllable of Los Angeles... What? o.O

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e41ygKJ3ABk

Well, I suppose...

[schwhatever]

Redding is [r\`EdiN] ~ [r\`E4iN]. Chula Vista isn't in my neck of the woods, but if I came across it, I'd say [tSu5a vIst@] at least in English.

And yeah, my boyfriend goes crazy over how we call Nevada [nIv{d@] not [nEvada]

[linguoboy]

And yeah, my boyfriend goes crazy over how we call Nevada [nIv{d@] not [nEvada]

Where is he from? I can't imagine anyone calling it [nEvada] with no vowel reduction at all--except Spanish-speakers, if not for the fact that they lack [v].

[Travis B.]

Redding is [r\`EdiN] ~ [r\`E4iN]. Chula Vista isn't in my neck of the woods, but if I came across it, I'd say [tSu5a vIst@] at least in English.

Likewise [ɰˤɜːɾɨ̃ːŋ]~[ɰˤɜ̃̂ːɨ̯̃ŋ] and [ˈtɕʰʉ̯uɰəː/ˈtɕʰʉ̯uwəː ˈvɪs̻t̻ə(ː)/ˈvɪs̻ːə(ː)] respectively for me by default.

And yeah, my boyfriend goes crazy over how we call Nevada [nIv{d@] not [nEvada]

Those for me are [nəːˈvɛːɾə(ː)]~[ˈnəːˈvɛ̂ːə̯] for me. The latter of the above sounds like someone trying too hard to pronounce the name as if it were in Spanish but not actually knowing how to pronounce it as in Spanish...

[finlay]

All i'm saying is that if I hear /ɑ/ from an American, I map it to /ɔ/ (because this is the general case), which is why it bothers me when it's also used for the PALM set. (In the case of Spanish /o/, it's the matching of that to a low vowel in English which bothers me)

aka how dare you have a father-bother merger.

Were los a COT word to me, you'd be even more thrilled that I'd use a vowel closely approximating your TRAP vowel.

oh i can deal with you having different vowels from me; it's just when the mapping isn't 1:1 that I start to find it strange or confusing.

It plays havoc for learning new words – my favourite example that I remember from a few years ago was "pilates", which the English pronounced "pilartes" and the Canadian who was there pronounced "piloddies". They both had /ɑ/ but it represented a different vowel – with a different merger in each one. Of course, I repeated it back with /ar/, and got laughed at. So I have to then work out what set it's supposed to be in (PALM i believe) and apply the merger for my own accent, which would be something like TRAP-BATH-PALM all as one roughly central /a/ (instead of the BATH-PALM-START that the English have and the PALM-LOT-THOUGHT that the Canadians have). I might lengthen it or do [ɑ] when I'm around English people for a while, which blurs the issue a bit (essentially my accent's also a bit mixed).

[ɫɔ̽ˈsandʒəɫi:z̥]

[iː] in the last syllable of Los Angeles... What? o.O

Yeah... maybe it's an atlantic divide??

[AnTeallach]

the BATH-PALM-START that the English have

Ahem. Some of the English.

Anyway, I use TRAP (=BATH, but not PALM) for "Las" and LOT (=CLOTH) for "Los". I.e. [a] and [ɔ] respectively, or thereabouts.

[Travis B.]

All i'm saying is that if I hear /ɑ/ from an American, I map it to /ɔ/ (because this is the general case), which is why it bothers me when it's also used for the PALM set. (In the case of Spanish /o/, it's the matching of that to a low vowel in English which bothers me)

aka how dare you have a father-bother merger.

Were los a COT word to me, you'd be even more thrilled that I'd use a vowel closely approximating your TRAP vowel.

oh i can deal with you having different vowels from me; it's just when the mapping isn't 1:1 that I start to find it strange or confusing.

It plays havoc for learning new words – my favourite example that I remember from a few years ago was "pilates", which the English pronounced "pilartes" and the Canadian who was there pronounced "piloddies". They both had /ɑ/ but it represented a different vowel – with a different merger in each one. Of course, I repeated it back with /ar/, and got laughed at. So I have to then work out what set it's supposed to be in (PALM i believe) and apply the merger for my own accent, which would be something like TRAP-BATH-PALM all as one roughly central /a/ (instead of the BATH-PALM-START that the English have and the PALM-LOT-THOUGHT that the Canadians have). I might lengthen it or do [ɑ] when I'm around English people for a while, which blurs the issue a bit (essentially my accent's also a bit mixed).

Ooooooh... now that is one of my biggest pet peeves.

I have mentioned this before in threads, but this is something that consistently gets on my nerves.

I hate hate hate it when people confuse historical /t/ and /d/ in unstressed intervocalic environments in eye-dialect spellings of spoken North American English varieties. This is as my own dialect and the associated localized General American consistently preserve the distinction between historical /t/ and /d/ intervocalically, even if they are deleted, except for in a very few notable cases likely involving dialect borrowing. Hence when I read an intervocalic /t/ written as "d", it just drives me up the wall, because if I try to actually pronounce out the eye-dialect spelling, it just sounds plain wrong.

Of course, I am sure that speakers of many other English varieties, particularly ones outside North America, would be unable to tell the difference between intervocalic /t/ and intervocalic /d/, especially if they were deleted, in my dialect or the associated localized GA (as they are unlikely to pick up on the vowel length distinction or the difference between a voiceless and a voiced flap). Similarly, I am sure many NAE varieties completely lack this distinction, with both unstressed intervocalic /t/ and /d/ being generally perceived as being merged to /d/. Yet, this does not makes seeing words that have been apparently crossed over from having /t/ to having /d/ any less innervating...

[ɫɔ̽ˈsandʒəɫi:z̥]

[iː] in the last syllable of Los Angeles... What? o.O

Yeah... maybe it's an atlantic divide??

That I wouldn't know.

[faiuwle]

I have the cot/caught merger, but I'm not from California, and if I saw "Los Gatos" on a roadsign I'd probably read it as /los/, though I guess it could just be Spanish interference. Los Angeles is /lɑs/, but I think that's an exception; Los Alamos is also /los/, for example (although now that I'm actually thinking about it, I'm starting to doubt that judgment...)

And for finlay: what annoys me is when the British-accent-Lexus-commercial guy says [ɔ] in words where I have /ɑ/, causing me to interpret it as /o/ and wondering why anyone would buy anything from a mole.

[finlay]

the BATH-PALM-START that the English have

Ahem. Some of the English.

Anyway, I use TRAP (=BATH, but not PALM) for "Las" and LOT (=CLOTH) for "Los". I.e. [a] and [ɔ] respectively, or thereabouts.

Argh, another pet peeve ... having to put a disclaimer in every sentence because people are going to pick up on it. YES I KNOW THAT ENGLAND HAS MORE THAN ONE DIALECT THANK YOU.

As for travis's pet peeve, well I'm not sure I fully believe you on that one, because many N-American speakers will make the same eye-dialect spellings, but fair enough if you say it applies to YOUR dialect. But when you reach this sort of level of introspection about your own language... well I certainly don't know what's real anymore, which is why I try to only give vague descriptions of what I do in my dialect – because if I say that I never do a certain word or pronunciation or make a certain distinction, I'm sure to notice myself making it...

And also, that is how it sounds.

Also also, if it comes to it I do sporadically flap my t's and d's myself (the phenomenon does exist in Britain – probably from American influence but I dunno...), but the flaps share the space with glottal stops and coronal plosives, which are more common. I certainly don't make a distinction if I flap them. Going off on a tangent, I also sporadically tap my r's, and while I'm not convinced that it's real or 100% true all the time, I feel like I could make the distinction between a tapped /r/ and a flapped /t/. But I would hesitate to say it's a tap/flap distinction, because a) neither is the 'normal' form of /t/ or /r/, b) the /r/ might be actually trilled slightly, c) I'm saying the words to myself over and over in a controlled, hyperreal situation, so I'm not convinced that the distinction would show up in normal speech.... observers' paradox....

[Travis B.]

As for travis's pet peeve, well I'm not sure I fully believe you on that one, because many N-American speakers will make the same eye-dialect spellings, but fair enough if you say it applies to YOUR dialect. But when you reach this sort of level of introspection about your own language... well I certainly don't know what's real anymore, which is why I try to only give vague descriptions of what I do in my dialect – because if I say that I never do a certain word or pronunciation or make a certain distinction, I'm sure to notice myself making it...

And also, that is how it sounds.

In reality I bet it is simply that a large portion of NAE varieties do not make this distinction but rather have truly neutralized unstressed intervocalic /t/ and /d/, or have neutralized them except where some sort of Canadian Raising applies.

In the English I am personally familiar with, though, the distinction between unstressed intervocalic /t/ and /d/ is well-defined. It is not one of those things that changes with register or stress or which only shows up in some contrived environment. The only catch is that I often have to say a word in an actual sentence to reliably pick up the vowel length difference; it is much harder to reliably pick up when words are said in isolation, as the particular stress and diction messes with it. It is mostly as one would expect, though, aside from there being the occasional time I find a word where my actual pronunciation does not match what one would expect from spelling; e.g. metal and medal are homophones with /t/, and medal and meddle are not, for me.

[bulbaquil]

I'm cot/caught merged:

Los Angeles: [ˌɫɒsˈæ̃ndʒɫ̩əs]~[ˌɫɒsˈæ̃ndʒɫ̩ɨs]
Las Vegas: [ˌɫɒsˈveɪɡɨs]

I.e., the vowel for both "los" and "las" in Spanish-origin-but-English-language place names is that of the LOT set (which, for me, is the same as that of the THOUGHT set).

yeah this is actually father-bother because "las" would be the PALM set...

Ah, okay. Well, I have father/bother too, so that would work then.

I have the cot/caught merger, but I'm not from California, and if I saw "Los Gatos" on a roadsign I'd probably read it as /los/, though I guess it could just be Spanish interference. Los Angeles is /lɑs/, but I think that's an exception; Los Alamos is also /los/, for example (although now that I'm actually thinking about it, I'm starting to doubt that judgment...)

And for finlay: what annoys me is when the British-accent-Lexus-commercial guy says [ɔ] in words where I have /ɑ/, causing me to interpret it as /o/ and wondering why anyone would buy anything from a mole.

I would pronounce "Los Gatos" as something like /lɘsˈɡɑˌtʰɘs/, same with most other "Los X" names except Los Angeles; the reason is probably because I parse the others as "Spanish names," whereas I parse Los Angeles as an "English name". Or it's possible it might be the fact that "Angeles" starts with a vowel while "Gatos" doesn't. Not sure.

[makvas]

Jashan, you've forgot that Chickasaw is [ˈtʰʃɪkʰəˌʃɛj]

Italy, Texas, is [ˈɪʔɫi]

Ouray, Colorado is [ˈjɹ̩.ɛj] according to the natives I've met.

[tezcatlip0ca]

Ouray, Colorado is [ˈjɹ̩.ɛj] according to the natives I've met.

Which I will say /ˈjʊəɹeɪ/, since I have /ʊəɹ/, and the locals apparently don't.

[AnTeallach]

the BATH-PALM-START that the English have

Ahem. Some of the English.

Anyway, I use TRAP (=BATH, but not PALM) for "Las" and LOT (=CLOTH) for "Los". I.e. [a] and [ɔ] respectively, or thereabouts.

Argh, another pet peeve ... having to put a disclaimer in every sentence because people are going to pick up on it. YES I KNOW THAT ENGLAND HAS MORE THAN ONE DIALECT THANK YOU.

Well, say "southern English", then (because that's what you mean). The idea that "the English" (or even worse "the British") have the wretched TRAP-BATH split when about half of us don't is fairly high on my list of pet peeves.

[Shm Jay]

Jashan, you've forgot that Chickasaw is [ˈtʰʃɪkʰəˌʃɛj]
.

That’s Chickasha.

[Soap]

I say Los Angeles with the vowel of LOSS (variously considered /Q/ and /O/ since theyre merged here in northern New England) and the others, including Los Alamos and other vowel-initial pairs, with the true /o/. Las always has /a/.