Non-rhotic phonemes from non-rhotic origins?

[derkins]

So I've been looking around, but I can't seem to find a list of words with the phonemes /ɪə, ɛə, ʊə, ɜː/ that did not result from historic sequences of /ir, er, ur, ɜr/ (ex. idea, yeah. Is there anyone who can come up with a good list of words that fit this description?

While we're at it, is English still actively taking in loanwords that are given /æ, ɒ/ outside of Greek and Latin?

[AnTeallach]

So I've been looking around, but I can't seem to find a list of words with the phonemes /ɪə, ɛə, ʊə, ɜː/ that did not result from historic sequences of /ir, er, ur, ɜr/ (ex. idea, yeah. Is there anyone who can come up with a good list of words that fit this description?

I don't have a list, but:
/ɪə/ usually derives from a sequence of FLEECE and a weak vowel. Examples IMD: theatre, vehicle, idea, Beatrice, Leopold.
/ɛə/ is rare not followed by historic /r/, but it can occasionally crop up in French loans with a long allophone of /ɛ/, like cortege. My dialect actually has plain /ɛ/ in yeah.
/ʊə/ I think is unheard of not followed by historic /r/. At least I can't think of any examples.
/ɜː/ is very common as an anglicisation of front rounded vowels. (For some of us, it is a front(ish) rounded vowel itself.)

While we're at it, is English still actively taking in loanwords that are given /æ, ɒ/ outside of Greek and Latin?

In British English, yes: they're the usual vowels used when anglicising words with [a] and [ɔ] type vowels respectively, naturally enough given that "/æ/" and "/ɒ/" are often pronounced [a] and [ɔ] in current British English.

[linguoboy]

While we're at it, is English still actively taking in loanwords that are given /æ, ɒ/ outside of Greek and Latin?

In British English, yes: they're the usual vowels used when anglicising words with [a] and [ɔ] type vowels respectively, naturally enough given that "/æ/" and "/ɒ/" are often pronounced [a] and [ɔ] in current British English.

And because many varieties of American English lack exact counterparts of these vowels, their equivalents vary. I've heard, for instance, Taliban and Qur'an with both /æ/ and /ɑ/ depending on the speaker. I myself would generally have one of each in "Taliban" (i.e. /'tælɪ,bɑn/), although neither using two /æ/'s or two /ɑ/'s sounds odd to me.

[derkins]

Would <tuatara, fuel> have /ʊə/ and <real> have /ɪə/? I've also read that some dialects merge <power, pyre> into /pɑə/. If this is true, does the new phoneme(?) expand to words like <lion, iodine>?

Is it more common for British speakers to have words like lava and pasta with broad or flat a? I know in America, the preference is usually for broad a, especially before nasals-which I think would mostly be due to how different the prenasal allophone of flat a is from your typical non-English a.

Please excuse any ignorance I have on the subject, I've just had a hard time with the sorting the vowel system outside of my own accent.

[finlay]

Well, where are you from? that'd be a big help, since I'm not quite sure what you're referring to. You seem to have a non-rhotic accent, but then why would you be more familiar with an American accent?

Which is broad a and flat a? I honestly don't know, which is why I prefer it if people just say /æ/ versus /ɑ/ and so on – back and front 'a' would be a better way of indicating the distinction. And some of us just don't have the distinction – Britain isn't a monolith and it's hard to generalise about speakers of "British English".

From observation of speakers with the distinction, I think most RP-ish speakers use /lɑvə/ and /pæstə/ – I know that some Americans say /pɑstə/, which sounds wrong to me.

[Terra]

I know that some Americans say /pɑstə/, which sounds wrong to me.

Only some?

Also, in the same vein as "Taliban" and "Koran", there's "Vietnam".

[finlay]

I know that some Americans say /pɑstə/. Do all Americans say /pɑstə/? I don't know.

[Soap]

I think America usually pronounces Italian foods the same as in the original Italian apart from a few hypercorrections like bologna (said as if spelled "baloney") and other words like bruschetta (which has /š/). And of course /ə/ for unstressed /a/.

[Rui]

and other words like bruschetta (which has /š/).

I want to kill with fire everyone who pronounces bruschetta with a /S/

[----]

I know that some Americans say /pɑstə/. Do all Americans say /pɑstə/? I don't know.

I say /pɑstə/. Isn't that closer to the native pronunciation?
For Taliban and Qur'an, I have two /æ/'s in the first, and an /ɑ/ in the second.

[Aurora Rossa]

I have /a/ for the vowels in "Taliban" and "Qur'an" myself.

[Jetboy]

Which is broad a and flat a? I honestly don't know, which is why I prefer it if people just say /æ/ versus /ɑ/ and so on – back and front 'a' would be a better way of indicating the distinction. And some of us just don't have the distinction – Britain isn't a monolith and it's hard to generalise about speakers of "British English".

From observation of speakers with the distinction, I think most RP-ish speakers use /lɑvə/ and /pæstə/ – I know that some Americans say /pɑstə/, which sounds wrong to me.

The "a"'s are whatever the vowel of the describing word is (or I know so for flat, and believe so for broad): /flæt/ "a" is /æ/, and presumably /brαd/ "a" is /α/ (or whatever you have in broad, it might be rounded).

Also, as an American, /pæstǝ/ sounds ridiculous to me, kind of like old people saying /mærio/ for /mαrio/.

[linguofreak]

So I've been looking around, but I can't seem to find a list of words with the phonemes /ɪə, ɛə, ʊə, ɜː/ that did not result from historic sequences of /ir, er, ur, ɜr/ (ex. idea, yeah. Is there anyone who can come up with a good list of words that fit this description?

While we're at it, is English still actively taking in loanwords that are given /æ, ɒ/ outside of Greek and Latin?

IMD "yeah" is /jæ/. Which is strange, because otherwise final /æ/ is phonotactically invalid IMD.

There are a fair number of words spelled with final /ɪə/ (Onomatopoeia leaps to mind, as does bulimia). The other three (/ɛə, ʊə, ɜː/) are not valid phonemes/sequences in rhotic dialects.

[derkins]

I am a rhotic speaker from Nebraska just to clear things up, which (hopefully) explains my ignorance here. I know that non-rhotic accents don't all have the same phoneme spread, but I am trying to understand these phonemes in some of the more common accents that have them.

IMD we have two words that can end in /æ/ - yeah and na.

And to be clear, flat=front and broad=back.

[AnTeallach]

I know that some Americans say /pɑstə/. Do all Americans say /pɑstə/? I don't know.

I say /pɑstə/. Isn't that closer to the native pronunciation?

The native pronunciation is [pasta]. So it depends on how you realise the two vowels: if you're from the Inland North of the US then PALM/LOT is almost certainly closest to the Italian vowel, but if you're from Canada or much of the UK TRAP is closest, while from parts of southern England and the southern hemisphere STRUT might actually be best, but I don't know whether anyone uses that.

The US Inland North pronunciation of "pasta" sounds (to my ears) essentially the same as mine, even though one is with PALM/LOT and one with TRAP. But then I hear Californians saying "possta" (i.e. it sounds to me like they're using [ɒ] or something in that area), which sounds quite strange.

[Gulliver]

Is it more common for British speakers to have words like lava and pasta with broad or flat a? I know in America, the preference is usually for broad a, especially before nasals-which I think would mostly be due to how different the prenasal allophone of flat a is from your typical non-English a.

For me, and lots of southern pansies like me, they are different vowels. "Southern"* English distinguishes lava with a long broad /ɑː/ (cava and carver are more or less homophonic) and pasta with a shorter /æ/. It's called the trap-bath split. There is a further distinction between /æ/ (lad /læd/) and /æ:/ (bad /bæ:d/) in some Southern dialects (band /'bæːnd/ and banned /'bænd/ are a minimal pair put forward.)

How would you say "The bad barred bard baaed" (The naughty prohibited performance poet made a noised like a sheep)? For me it's /ðə bæːd bɑːd bɑːd bɑːd/.

* "Southern" English generally seems to exclude the West Country and actually means "commuting distance from London", and many smaller regional dialects that are now facing extinction in favour of a mesolectalised form.

[----]

For me, 'yeah' is [jɛə̯] which is kind of odd because I can't think of any other words that end with that diphthong.

[Imralu]

So I've been looking around, but I can't seem to find a list of words with the phonemes /ɪə, ɛə, ʊə, ɜː/ that did not result from historic sequences of /ir, er, ur, ɜr/ (ex. idea, yeah. Is there anyone who can come up with a good list of words that fit this description?

IMD ...
RP /ɪə/ is /ɪə/
RP /ɛə/ is /eː/
RP /ʊə/ doesn't have an equivalent (either being replaced with /oː/ as in "poor" or /ʉː.ə/ as in "tour")
RP /ɜː/ is present as /ɜː/

For /ɪə/ I can only think of idea [ɑeˈdɪɐ] and theatre [ˈθɪːɾɐ] (vehicle has /iː.ɪ/ while Beatrice and Leopold have /iː.ə/)
For /eː/ I can only think of yeah [jeː] and Garnier [gaː.ni.ˈeː] which I suppose can be included because the French or faux-French origin of the name would not have a rhotic sound there.
For /ɜː/ all I can think of is Peugeot and with educated speakers also Schröder and Goethe. (For the former, it's more common to hear [ˈʃɹəʉːɾɐ] and for the latter I actually once heard someone say [ˈgəʉ.iːθ].

While we're at it, is English still actively taking in loanwords that are given /æ, ɒ/ outside of Greek and Latin?

IMD, yes. Australian English equivalent phonemes are /æ/ and /ɔ/. Those are the default pronunciations of <a> and <o> in closed syllables in loan-words. For example katsudon could either be /ˈkætsʉːdɔn/ or /ˈkatsuːdɔn/ (RP phoneme equivalents: /ˈkætsuːdɒn/ or /ˈkʌtsuːdɒn/). Using /a/ (RP equivalent: /ʌ/) for a short <a> in loanwords seems a bit wanky. In open syllables, <a> and <o> tend to be /aː/ and /oː/ respectively, as in Mikado /mɪ.ˈkaːdəʉ/.

Just looking at a list of loanwords from Japanese and it just struck me as funny that "rickshaw" is pronounced with a final /o:/ here, considering the /a/ pronunciation in Japanese, but I guess it's a spelling pronunciation based on the weird American pronunciation spelling <aw>. And then there's Arkansas, which is /ˈaːkənsoː/ or /ˈaːkɪnsoː/.

[finlay]

Is it more common for British speakers to have words like lava and pasta with broad or flat a? I know in America, the preference is usually for broad a, especially before nasals-which I think would mostly be due to how different the prenasal allophone of flat a is from your typical non-English a.

For me, and lots of southern pansies like me, they are different vowels. "Southern"* English distinguishes lava with a long broad /ɑː/ (cava and carver are more or less homophonic) and pasta with a shorter /æ/. It's called the trap-bath split. There is a further distinction between /æ/ (lad /læd/) and /æ:/ (bad /bæ:d/) in some Southern dialects (band /'bæːnd/ and banned /'bænd/ are a minimal pair put forward.)

How would you say "The bad barred bard baaed" (The naughty prohibited performance poet made a noised like a sheep)? For me it's /ðə bæːd bɑːd bɑːd bɑːd/.

[ðə bad bɑɻd bɑɻd baːd]

[Soap]

yeah is /j{/ for me, but pronounced like [jeə]. PResumably its a variant of 'yea' which somehow got a schwa off-glide.

[Imralu]

How would you say "The bad barred bard baaed" (The naughty prohibited performance poet made a noised like a sheep)? For me it's /ðə bæːd bɑːd bɑːd bɑːd/.

Mine's /ðə bæːd baːd baːd baːd/ ... basically the equivalent of yours.

My bud, the bad barred bard bad me farewell.
/mɑe bad ðə bæːd baːd baːd bæd mi feːˈwel/ (Yes, a rather archaic past tense of bid ... never actually used it or heard it in seriousness, but I somehow know it must have a short /æ/ ... possibly on analogy with other past tense verbs with <a>.

But tell me, Mister Could-Oh-So-Easily-Steal-My-Boyfriend, do you really have a phonemic /æ/ vs /æː/ distinction? I do, but I was under the impression it was pretty much restricted to Australia and New Zealand. The other day a friend of mine said "planner" as /ˈplænə/ and the short /æ/ was enough to confuse me. I didn't know what she was talking about. I thought she said "planet". I've never heard another Australian say planner with a short /æ/. She talks a bit strangely (she also says "us" as /az/ instead of /as/, which is far from usual round here). For me, "planet" and "planner" are /ˈplænət/ and /ˈplæːnə/. "Plan it" is /ˈplæːnət/ when the "it" is unstressed, which is cool because I wasn't aware of "planet" and "plan it" as a minimal pair.

[finlay]

where does this length distinction come from?

[Gulliver]

But tell me, Mister Could-Oh-So-Easily-Steal-My-Boyfriend, do you really have a phonemic /æ/ vs /æː/ distinction? I do, but I was under the impression it was pretty much restricted to Australia and New Zealand. The other day a friend of mine said "planner" as /ˈplænə/ and the short /æ/ was enough to confuse me. I didn't know what she was talking about. I thought she said "planet". I've never heard another Australian say planner with a short /æ/. She talks a bit strangely (she also says "us" as /az/ instead of /as/, which is far from usual round here). For me, "planet" and "planner" are /ˈplænət/ and /ˈplæːnə/. "Plan it" is /ˈplæːnət/ when the "it" is unstressed, which is cool because I wasn't aware of "planet" and "plan it" as a minimal pair.

I am a stolen boyfriend; I need steal no-one else's.

I will admit I'm struggling to find a minimal pair. Saying /bæd/ (or /mæd/) would "sound a bit Northern", and saying /læ:d/ sounds like the past tense of the pretend verb /læ:/. I can think of words that are always long and words that are always short and some that could be either (but this might be something to do with stress).

The only one I can think of is Mad (short form of Madeline) /mæd/ and mad /mæ:d/.

[äreo]

I think it shares its roots with some varieties of æ-tensing found in North America (tho the NA version corresponds to the trap-bath split as well). The tensed phoneme is described in NA as /ɛə/ or /eə/ and not /æː/, but I think they're more or less the same phenomenon, just with different distributions and realisations (at any rate, any tensed short A is something like [ɛː] for me).

Non-phonemic tensing before nasals can complicate things a bit tho. For example, to me (lived in a dialectal melting pot for awhile) it sounds totally normal to hear or say [plænɪʔ] for planet, but never for plan it; the latter is always [plɛːnɪʔ], but the former can be either one. Before consonants other than /n/, it's less predictable. Sometimes I say [bɛːd̚] and [lɛːf], sometimes [bæd] and [læf].

More on-topic, I have a similar vowel for yeah most of the time. So [jeː], it does rhyme with bear and hair (final /r/ notwithstanding).

[Imralu]

The "a"'s are whatever the vowel of the describing word is (or I know so for flat, and believe so for broad): /flæt/ "a" is /æ/, and presumably /brαd/ "a" is /α/ (or whatever you have in broad, it might be rounded).

Might be rounded? IMD, yes, it's rounded, very much so, but it's also raised all the way up to close-mid and not something many people outside of North America would ever call an "a" sound. The two "a" sounds we're talking about here are, IMD, /æ/ (or /æ:/) and /a:/. I have them in these words:
Flat: /flæt/
Past: /pa:st/

I do not have either of them in this word:
Broad: /bro:d/

Neither does RP, which has /flæt/, either /pɑːst/ or /pæst/ and /brɔːd/. In fact, the only dialects where you could conceivably talk of an "a" sound in "broad" are dialects that have both the cot-caught merger and the father-bother merger (yep, it's two vowels away from being an "a" sound), and I don't know of any of those outside of North America.

This is just to show why dialect dependent descriptions of sounds like "the broad A sound is the vowel sound in the word 'broad'" don't accomplish much. In fact, I only knew what you're talking about because I'm reasonably aware of the fact that some American accents merge some of their their o-ish vowel sounds with some of their a-ish vowel sounds. When I was unacquainted with linguistics and without too much knowledge of American accents other than what they sound like, I would have been completely confused about what you mean by the broad "a" sound in "broad". Huh? The a's just hanging out there with the "o". It doesn't have a sound of it's own, just like in "boat". You don't say /bəʉ.ˈæt/ ... it's just an "o" sound there. The vowel in "broad" is the "or/aw/au" sound, it's not an "a" sound. And since I needed to be a bit of a linguist to work out what you meant, isn't it just better to stick to linguistic descriptions that are precise?

where does this length distinction come from?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonologic ... 3lad_split
Hmm, it's more widespread than I thought ... but only a little. Interestingly, I don't have the difference between "banned" and "ban". I do have it between "span" (= stretch across) and "span" (spin.PAST), and until I found "planet" and "plan it", the only other one I was aware of was between "banner" (long flag) and "banner" (one who bans).

I am a stolen boyfriend; I need steal no-one else's.

Ooh!