My own analysis of my English's vowel system

[Bedelato]

Just looking at *any* analysis of English, I have a feeling that you could pretend that English has postpositions in some dialects. Like in Southern US English,

one of the guys knows it <-- "correct"
one of the guys know it <-- more common

This suggests that "the guys" is the subject, "one of" would be the adpositional phrase, instead of "of the guys". This breaks down with any prepositional phrase that's not adjectival in nature, but it's still interesting.

Um, can someone say "non sequitur"?

[makvas]

Just looking at *any* analysis of English, I have a feeling that you could pretend that English has postpositions in some dialects. Like in Southern US English,

one of the guys knows it <-- "correct"
one of the guys know it <-- more common

This suggests that "the guys" is the subject, "one of" would be the adpositional phrase, instead of "of the guys". This breaks down with any prepositional phrase that's not adjectival in nature, but it's still interesting.

Um, can someone say "non sequitur"?

Um, can someone say "off topic"?

You suggested changing it from "analysis of English's vowel system" to "analysis of English's phonology". I only suggested taking it further to "analysis of English", so not really a non sequitur.

[Bedelato]

Well, you didn't even say anything about that. You just jumped right in and started talking about grammar in a phonology thread for what seemed like no reason.

Okay, it was more of a tangent than a non-sequitur. Sorry for misunderstanding, but please learn from this. Don't just change the subject without saying something. At least not on my threads, anyway.

By the way, nice comeback

[Rory]

There is no way to transcribe bunched r in IPA. There are two reasons for this, in my view:

1) IPA is intended to be able to transcribe phonologically relevant distinctions only.
2) There are several different articulatory strategies that have much the same acoustic consequences; does it really matter how a sound is articulated if it sounds the same? I could listen to a recording, and say "for sure, that's a bilabial stop", but it may never have come from the lips of anything (e.g. it could have been synthesised by a machine).

With regards recording stuff: in some states, recording phone conversations only requires the consent of one party (i.e. you, the recorder). However, it is unethical to record people and use their voices as data without their consent. What I was originally suggesting, though, was that Travis record his telephone conversations simply for the sake of getting samples of his own speech - i.e. all non-Travis speech (and any information identifying his interlocutors) would be redacted. This is both legal and ethical.

[Travis B.]

Ewe/yew/you sounds like it would be a good way to test if any dialects have a true contrast between /ju/ and /iu/. Does any such dialect exist?

That is a very good question that I would be interesting in seeing the answer to myself.

What about the expression of disgust "ew"? I've certainly heard [iu] for that, and no one would confuse it with [ju]. Or does that not count?

That does not count, as interjections very commonly do not follow the same phonological rules as other words in a given language.

[derkins]

Ewe/yew/you sounds like it would be a good way to test if any dialects have a true contrast between /ju/ and /iu/. Does any such dialect exist?

That is a very good question that I would be interesting in seeing the answer to myself.

What about the expression of disgust "ew"? I've certainly heard [iu] for that, and no one would confuse it with [ju]. Or does that not count?

That does not count, as interjections very commonly do not follow the same phonological rules as other words in a given language.

At least in my area, that is also the pronunciation of ewe.

[Travis B.]

Ewe/yew/you sounds like it would be a good way to test if any dialects have a true contrast between /ju/ and /iu/. Does any such dialect exist?

That is a very good question that I would be interesting in seeing the answer to myself.

What about the expression of disgust "ew"? I've certainly heard [iu] for that, and no one would confuse it with [ju]. Or does that not count?

That does not count, as interjections very commonly do not follow the same phonological rules as other words in a given language.

At least in my area, that is also the pronunciation of ewe.

And what, out of curiosity, is your area?

[derkins]

Nebraska.
When I was first getting into linguistics I wanted to know what the sound in ewe was, because I didn't recognize it. Everything I'd read said it was [ju], but I was pretty sure it wasn't a homophone to you. So I checked with my brother and a couple of friends. I had them first pronounce ewe and then you, and the results were consistently [iu] and [ju]. I only checked with a few people, so it's not exactly exhaustive.

[Imralu]

Nebraska.
When I was first getting into linguistics I wanted to know what the sound in ewe was, because I didn't recognize it. Everything I'd read said it was [ju], but I was pretty sure it wasn't a homophone to you. So I checked with my brother and a couple of friends. I had them first pronounce ewe and then you, and the results were consistently [iu] and [ju]. I only checked with a few people, so it's not exactly exhaustive.

Do you say "a ewe" or "an ewe"?

[----]

I live in the state of Georgia, and in my dialect <ewe> and <you> are homophones, and I say 'a ewe'

I don't know how common this is in dialects of English, but it really wouldn't be accurate to have a phoneme /ʊ/ in my speech. The sound that corresponds to that in other dialects of English is always unrounded for me, and it would be better to transcribe it as /ɤ/.

[derkins]

Nebraska.
When I was first getting into linguistics I wanted to know what the sound in ewe was, because I didn't recognize it. Everything I'd read said it was [ju], but I was pretty sure it wasn't a homophone to you. So I checked with my brother and a couple of friends. I had them first pronounce ewe and then you, and the results were consistently [iu] and [ju]. I only checked with a few people, so it's not exactly exhaustive.

Do you say "a ewe" or "an ewe"?

Since Theta bumped this and I ha completely missed this question, I would say "an ewe". I've asked more friends since, and they've consistently answered that way.

[finlay]

I live in the state of Georgia, and in my dialect <ewe> and <you> are homophones, and I say 'a ewe'

I don't know how common this is in dialects of English, but it really wouldn't be accurate to have a phoneme /ʊ/ in my speech. The sound that corresponds to that in other dialects of English is always unrounded for me, and it would be better to transcribe it as /ɤ/.

It depends what purpose you want it for, because English tends to have cross-dialectal "naming" conventions when it comes to phonemes. Like I think my /ʊ/ is a schwa, but I'd still label it as /ʊ/, because that has a sort of meaning crossdialectally. I'm not sure how "native" it is to my dialect – most linguists expect that Scottish accents don't have a FOOT-GOOSE contrast, but I definitely do – [fət]/[fɵt] vs [gʉs]/[gys]. Like I don't know whether I always had that distinction or I only started doing it when I lived in England.

This is part of why I get confused when Americans label their /ʌ/ as /ə/, because even if it's not [ʌ], labelling it as /ʌ/ emphasises that it's the same phoneme as you get in BrE.

However, if you're actually trying to emphasise how different your accent is from the standard, this is an easy way to do it.

[mcruic]

With regard to [ju], I remember doing a study on only this segment for my BA. Sadly, it appears I've not kept the paper. But I remember coming to the conclusion that [ju] is, due to sound change, a merger of a few different segments.

With my native accent of English (Central Scots) - certain [ju] words become [je] or [je:]
Use (noun) (what use is this?) would be [jes]
Use (verb) would be [je:z]

And other instances of modern [ju] are pronounced differently still
'ewe', 'chew' and 'few' can be pronounced to rhyme with cow ('yow') ['chew' loses its [j] segment, possibly due to assimilation with the preceding 'ch']

Also, the second part of [ju] can be reduced to schwa, as in 'tenure', in unstressed syllables (compare to 'manure', where it s a full [ju]. As far as I am aware, diphthongs generally do not behave in this way.

All of this (and orthographic clues) point to several inputs for today's [ju] sound.

I would say it is actually both a diphthong and a j + u combination which happen to be pronounced the same nowadays.

As an aside - [ju] (and all words beginning with a [j] sound) always take the article 'a' and never 'an' in my dialect.

[Herr Dunkel]

My own English uses true umlauted vowels for the irregular plurals: <man> /mɑn/ vs. <man> /mɛn/ and <ɡoose> /ɡʉːs/ or /ɡʊːs/ vs. <ɡeese> /ɡʏːs/ or /ɡyːs/ dependinɡ which of the two former ones I happen to use.

This doesn't mean much since I'm no native.

[finlay]

['chew' loses its [j] segment, possibly due to assimilation with the preceding 'ch']

it doesn't have it in 99.9% of accents

As an aside - [ju] (and all words beginning with a [j] sound) always take the article 'a' and never 'an' in my dialect.

this is exactly the diagnostic test that imralu is using, and the reason why /ju/ is usually considered a consonant+vowel sequence rather than a diphthong, regardless of its etymological origin (even just considering the orthography as a layman, we can make the empirical assumption that it came from several different places originally).

most of what you say applies to all accents of english, is all i'm saying... people tend to assume or to phrase it in such a way that they're doubtful as to whether any of what they say applies outside their own accent, and overestimating regional features. That said, I've never heard anyone pronounce chew like chow (in edinburgh, so not too far away), and "use" as [jes] doesn't sound "normal" to me either, so they must be very regional features.

[mcruic]

['chew' loses its [j] segment, possibly due to assimilation with the preceding 'ch']

it doesn't have it in 99.9% of accents

As an aside - [ju] (and all words beginning with a [j] sound) always take the article 'a' and never 'an' in my dialect.

this is exactly the diagnostic test that imralu is using, and the reason why /ju/ is usually considered a consonant+vowel sequence rather than a diphthong, regardless of its etymological origin (even just considering the orthography as a layman, we can make the empirical assumption that it came from several different places originally).

most of what you say applies to all accents of english, is all i'm saying... people tend to assume or to phrase it in such a way that they're doubtful as to whether any of what they say applies outside their own accent, and overestimating regional features. That said, I've never heard anyone pronounce chew like chow (in edinburgh, so not too far away), and "use" as [jes] doesn't sound "normal" to me either, so they must be very regional features.

'chew' was a bad example. Thinking more on this one, 'chaw' to rhyme with 'raw' is more common.

[ju] is usually considered consonant+vowel, yes. And yes, that much is clear from a layman's orthographical musings. The cases of 'long u' (orthographic u+C+'magic e') are less clear though. They seem to follow the same pattern as other pure vowels. For example, mat/mate, met/mete, nit/nite, not/note, cut/cute. In many varieties of English, the pure vowel changes to a diphthong, or at least another qualitatively different pure vowel. But the pure vowel doesn't tend to change to a Consonant + vowel combination.

[jes] as in [ne jes] 'no use' is a very common pronunciation in Scotland (Glasgow uses this pronunciation also). I hadn't heard of this contrasting of [ju] in other varieties of English, this is why I specifically mentioned my variety.

[mcruic]

My own English uses true umlauted vowels for the irregular plurals: <man> /mɑn/ vs. <man> /mɛn/ and <ɡoose> /ɡʉːs/ or /ɡʊːs/ vs. <ɡeese> /ɡʏːs/ or /ɡyːs/ dependinɡ which of the two former ones I happen to use.

This doesn't mean much since I'm no native.

Using a rounded vowel (yː) or (ʏː) for 'geese' would definitely not be considered natural. I would imagine that the majority of English speakers have an unrounded high (close) vowel of some description corresponding to orthographic 'ee' sounds, however the 'ee' sounds have evolved.

[finlay]

[jes] as in [ne jes] 'no use' is a very common pronunciation in Scotland (Glasgow uses this pronunciation also).

fair enough. i'm pretty sure i haven't heard it over here, although it wouldn't be out of my mouth anyway because i speak quite poshly. i don't really ever go through to glasgow – last time i went there was over a year ago.

[mcruic]

[jes] as in [ne jes] 'no use' is a very common pronunciation in Scotland (Glasgow uses this pronunciation also).

fair enough. i'm pretty sure i haven't heard it over here, although it wouldn't be out of my mouth anyway because i speak quite poshly. i don't really ever go through to glasgow – last time i went there was over a year ago.

Someone from Edinburgh speaking poshly? Never! I don't think there are any jokes in Scotland concerning Morningside and pan-loafiness

I'd be interested in studying whether there is a change in vowel-quality in the part when compared to 'plain' (assuming good/food merger).

Would you rhyme "cute" with "boot"? or "cube" with "boob" for that matter?

[Herr Dunkel]

My own English uses true umlauted vowels for the irregular plurals: <man> /mɑn/ vs. <man> /mɛn/ and <ɡoose> /ɡʉːs/ or /ɡʊːs/ vs. <ɡeese> /ɡʏːs/ or /ɡyːs/ dependinɡ which of the two former ones I happen to use.

This doesn't mean much since I'm no native.

Using a rounded vowel (yː) or (ʏː) for 'geese' would definitely not be considered natural. I would imagine that the majority of English speakers have an unrounded high (close) vowel of some description corresponding to orthographic 'ee' sounds, however the 'ee' sounds have evolved.

You have to keep in mind that I learned English at quite a young age, and the only way the teachers could've explained to me how those kinds of plurals formed was to spell them in two ways, German and English:

<guus> <goose>
<güüs> <geese>
/ɡuːs/ /ɡuːs/
/ɡʏːs/ /ɡiːs/

That, when extended, also applies to <mice> /mɔʏs/, <men> /mɛn/ ~ /mæn/ etc.
Not a single Englishman had trouble understanding me up until now.

[mcruic]

<guus> <goose>
<güüs> <geese>
/ɡuːs/ /ɡuːs/
/ɡʏːs/ /ɡiːs/

That, when extended, also applies to <mice> /mɔʏs/, <men> /mɛn/ ~ /mæn/ etc.
Not a single Englishman had trouble understanding me up until now.

I suppose it would be easy enough to guess what you were saying if you were saying /ɡʏːs/, as no such sound exists in English.

But I'm also thinking in terms of French [y] - as in 'lune' (moon). If a French person said [lyn] and told me they were saying an English word, I'd be more likely to interpret the word as 'loon' rather than 'lean'. But that may only be the particular way I hear these sounds. Likewise, [gys] would sound to me more like a variant pronunciation of 'goose' than 'geese'. The reverse would mean that [lyn] would more likely be pronounced [lun] rather than [lin] by English speakers unfamiliar with the [y] sound.

I'm not sure why you would use [ɔʏ] in 'mice' rather than [ai], which exists in German also (especially as the first sound of the diphthong in singular 'mouse' is not [ɔ] but [a]. [maʊ̯s]

[Herr Dunkel]

<guus> <goose>
<güüs> <geese>
/ɡuːs/ /ɡuːs/
/ɡʏːs/ /ɡiːs/

That, when extended, also applies to <mice> /mɔʏs/, <men> /mɛn/ ~ /mæn/ etc.
Not a single Englishman had trouble understanding me up until now.

I suppose it would be easy enough to guess what you were saying if you were saying /ɡʏːs/, as no such sound exists in English.

But I'm also thinking in terms of French [y] - as in 'lune' (moon). If a French person said [lyn] and told me they were saying an English word, I'd be more likely to interpret the word as 'loon' rather than 'lean'. But that may only be the particular way I hear these sounds. Likewise, [gys] would sound to me more like a variant pronunciation of 'goose' than 'geese'. The reverse would mean that [lyn] would more likely be pronounced [lun] rather than [lin] by English speakers unfamiliar with the [y] sound.

I reckon [ʏ] and [y] are quite ɡood-soundinɡ and distinct from both /[ɪ] and [o]/[ɔ], but if some Englishman said "Schene hand" or "Schone hand", I'd stab them with my letter opener

[mcruic]

I reckon [ʏ] and [y] are quite ɡood-soundinɡ, but if some Englishman said "Schene hand" or "Schone hand", I'd stab them with my letter opener

I'm not debating the quality of the sounds - I too think they are good sounds

But they would sound a bit unusual in English (an Englishman pronouncing 'loch' as 'lock' sounds unusual to me).

I'm just saying that I am surprised that you have been understood - especially as [y] is such an unusual sound for English ears.

The nearest equivalent I can think of in terms of German, would be this

An Englishman pronouncing 'Ziel' as [tsy:l]. Would that sound natural to you?

[Herr Dunkel]

I reckon [ʏ] and [y] are quite ɡood-soundinɡ, but if some Englishman said "Schene hand" or "Schone hand", I'd stab them with my letter opener

I'm not debating the quality of the sounds - I too think they are good sounds

But they would sound a bit unusual in English (an Englishman pronouncing 'loch' as 'lock' sounds unusual to me).

I'm just saying that I am surprised that you have been understood - especially as [y] is such an unusual sound for English ears.

Actually, I'm a bit taken aback too. Maybe it's their brain's bullshit filter: they ignore the bullshit and fill in the gaps ("Two güüse, so that must mean 'two geese', don't waste your brainpower", said John's brain, tenderly filling his concious and subconcious with blatant lies)

[mcruic]

Actually, I'm a bit taken aback too. Maybe it's their brain's bullshit filter: they ignore the bullshit and fill in the gaps ("Two güüse, so that must mean 'two geese', don't waste your brainpower", said John's brain, tenderly filling his concious and subconcious with blatant lies)

Somebody somewhere must have done a study on how often the word 'geese' is spoken in England. How likely is the word 'geese' to come up in conversation in the pub?

By the way, do you pronounce 'teeth' as [tyθ]? And 'feet' as [fyt]?