The "How do You Pronounce X" Thread

[linguoboy]

Saw this the other day: Keep Your Laws Out Of My Drawers.

Since this is a political slogan, I guess it's supposed to rhyme? It doesn't come anywhere close in my dialect (drawer is a FORCE word for me and I have a FORCE-CURE merger), but do I assume correctly there are non-rhotic dialects where it does?

[jmcd]

https://www.google.com/search?q=syllabi ... ication%22

Syllabification seems to be like accentuation: both have phonetic and even acoustic realisation and can be realised differently depending on the language. Also, they can both cause lexical distinctions.

EDIT: @linguoboy: I expect so, considering the one thing keeping them from rhyming for me is the rhoticness of 'drawers'.

[Travis B.]

https://www.google.com/search?q=syllabi ... ication%22

Syllabification seems to be like accentuation: both have phonetic and even acoustic realisation and can be realised differently depending on the language. Also, they can both cause lexical distinctions.

EDIT: @linguoboy: I expect so, considering the one thing keeping them from rhyming for me is the rhoticness of 'drawers'.

Yes, of course syllabification has phonetic realization; if it didn't, you wouldn't be able to hear it, but of course people can hear it.

My point is that syllabification is realized in a language-dependent fashion - so it has to be phonological, because languages' phonologies vary but there is no reason to believe people who speak different languages have different mouths or brains overall.

[KathTheDragon]

Saw this the other day: Keep Your Laws Out Of My Drawers.

Since this is a political slogan, I guess it's supposed to rhyme? It doesn't come anywhere close in my dialect (drawer is a FORCE word for me and I have a FORCE-CURE merger), but do I assume correctly there are non-rhotic dialects where it does?

Yeah, it rhymes IMD

[linguoboy]

Saw this the other day: Keep Your Laws Out Of My Drawers.

Since this is a political slogan, I guess it's supposed to rhyme? It doesn't come anywhere close in my dialect (drawer is a FORCE word for me and I have a FORCE-CURE merger), but do I assume correctly there are non-rhotic dialects where it does?

Yeah, it rhymes IMD

Does that make draw and drawer homophones for you?

[Jonlang]

Saw this the other day: Keep Your Laws Out Of My Drawers.

Since this is a political slogan, I guess it's supposed to rhyme? It doesn't come anywhere close in my dialect (drawer is a FORCE word for me and I have a FORCE-CURE merger), but do I assume correctly there are non-rhotic dialects where it does?

Yeah, it rhymes IMD

Does that make draw and drawer homophones for you?

I think they are for most Brits. They are for me.

[Salmoneus]

Saw this the other day: Keep Your Laws Out Of My Drawers.

Since this is a political slogan, I guess it's supposed to rhyme? It doesn't come anywhere close in my dialect (drawer is a FORCE word for me and I have a FORCE-CURE merger), but do I assume correctly there are non-rhotic dialects where it does?

Yeah, it rhymes IMD

Does that make draw and drawer homophones for you?

If you mean 'drawer' as in "chest of drawers"... mostly. They probably basically are, but I would probably pronounce them differently if disambiguating (as something like [drO3] or [drO::]). I may actually usually pronounce them differently, but I don't think I can actually perceive the difference in speech. But the plurals are completely homophonous for me, I think.



If you mean "drawer" as in "one who draws something", then no, they're completely different. That sense of "drawer" has two syllables, and generally has /r/ in it. So something like /drOr@/, unless I'm ennunciating very clearly.

[sanskacharu]

Doesn't compile for me. Law is [lɔw], Drawer (as in a chest of drawers) is [dʒɹoɹ], perhaps [dʒɹowɹ]. They didn't even get the vowels to match... I do appreciate the slogan itself, though.

[KathTheDragon]

Saw this the other day: Keep Your Laws Out Of My Drawers.

Since this is a political slogan, I guess it's supposed to rhyme? It doesn't come anywhere close in my dialect (drawer is a FORCE word for me and I have a FORCE-CURE merger), but do I assume correctly there are non-rhotic dialects where it does?

Yeah, it rhymes IMD

Does that make draw and drawer homophones for you?

Yep. I can pronounce 'drawer' as /drɔ(r)ə/, similarly to Sal, but that's very much a careful pronunciation.

[linguoboy]

Doesn't compile for me. Law is [lɔw]

I would hear that as low rather than law. I don't know anyone who has a labial offglide in law.

[Travis B.]

Doesn't compile for me. Law is [lɔw]

I would hear that as low rather than law. I don't know anyone who has a labial offglide in law.

I had the very same thought myself.

[ˈd̪ʲɛ.gɔ kɾuˑl̪]

Have you listened to "Rockabye" by Clean Bandit? In 1:57 Anne-Marie sings "trying to keep out the cold", but without aspiration in the onset of "cold", so first time I misheard it as "gold". I realised it's "cold" in 2:54, when I can clearly hear the aspirated offset of /k/. Would you correct somebody if they sometimes forgot about aspiration?

Here's a link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=papuvlVeZg8

[Travis B.]

I have noticed myself not aspirating initial fortis obstruents in the middle of connected phrases where the preceding word ends with a vowel; note that this is not ambiguous, because vowel length allophony applies IMD across word boundaries, so the last vowel of the preceding word still encodes whether the first obstruent of the following word is fortis or lenis, and also because in this environment initial lenis obstruents tend to voice more than they do in isolation.

[Imralu]

I'm with the Brits on the laws and drawers thing. Complete rhyme. Both have [o:] for me (as long as it's chest of drawers, not people who draw, because that's bisyllabic and has an epenthetic /r/ as Sal mentioned).

For me, poor, pore, pour, paw are all homophones, and paws, pause, pours, pores ... and papaya is pawpaw.

All the words I can think of that rhyme with this for me:
bore, boar, Boer War, core, caw, craw, claw, chore, door, draw, drawer, four, for, floor, flaw, gore, galore, whore, jaw, law, lore, more, maw, gnaw, nor, poor, paw, pore, explore, implore, ore, or, oar, awe (but not "aww"), roar, raw, sore, saw, score, snore, smore, spore, store, shore, Shaw, sure, tore, vore, war, your, you're, yaw

And ignoring the earlier stress: pawpaw, coleslaw, Minotaur, Arkansas (ark and saw)

Re. aspiration:

I've noticed in my own speech sometimes that I will just occasionally not aspirate something that should be. It's just a glitch in my speech producer.

[Pole, the]

Do you pronounce asphalt with an ass or ash at the beginning?

[Travis B.]

Do you pronounce asphalt with an ass or ash at the beginning?

I pronounce asphalt with a clear /s/.

[linguoboy]

Do you pronounce asphalt with an ass or ash at the beginning?

It's not a word I use often, since IMD this is largely covered by "pavement". But when I do say it, it's with [s].

ETA: Or perhaps [z̥]. It feels pretty laxly articulated to me.

[Zaarin]

Do you pronounce asphalt with an ass or ash at the beginning?

[ʃ] from habit, which I'm in the process of correcting to [s].


Does frog have a CAUGHT vowel or COT vowel for you? I and most people I know have a CAUGHT vowel here, but I'm increasingly hearing the COT vowel, including from my mom. Thus I have [fɹ̱ˁɒg] and my mom has [fɻɑg].

[Travis B.]

Do you pronounce asphalt with an ass or ash at the beginning?

[ʃ] from habit, which I'm in the process of correcting to [s].


Does frog have a CAUGHT vowel or COT vowel for you? I and most people I know have a CAUGHT vowel here, but I'm increasingly hearing the COT vowel, including from my mom. Thus I have [fɹ̱ˁɒg] and my mom has [fɻɑg].

I have the CAUGHT vowel in frog.

[linguoboy]

Does frog have a CAUGHT vowel or COT vowel for you? I and most people I know have a CAUGHT vowel here, but I'm increasingly hearing the COT vowel, including from my mom. Thus I have [fɹ̱ˁɒg] and my mom has [fɻɑg].

CAUGHT.

I remember hearing it with COT on Sesame Street growing up and finding that very odd. I also remember being baffled by the eye-dialect spelling "dawg" because how else would you say that?

On the other hand, I have COT for cog, gog, grog, jog, nog, and tog. But slog is CAUGHT.

[alynnidalar]

I too have CAUGHT for <frog>.

Do you pronounce asphalt with an ass or ash at the beginning?

/ʃ/ for me. /s/ actually sounds rather odd to me, although plenty of people use it.

[Sumelic]

Do you pronounce asphalt with an ass or ash at the beginning?

[ʃ] from habit, which I'm in the process of correcting to [s].

Anybody know anything about how the pronunciation with /ʃ/ originated? There's no obvious phonetic motivation I can think of (it's not really any easier to pronounce /ʃf/ than /sf/). Is it an influence from the "h" in the spelling after the "p", or is it some connection to the word "ash"?

Does frog have a CAUGHT vowel or COT vowel for you?

I'm CAUGHT-COT merged, so COT. Another question for the non-merged American speakers here: what vowels do you have before "l" in the following words?

• doll, moll, loll, Sol (the Roman god), pol (clipping of "politician")
• alcohol, ethanol, methanol, parasol, aerosol
• golf, dolphin, solv- (in solve, absolve, resolve, solvent, solvency) -volv- (in evolve, revolve, involve, devolve), olfaction, olfactory
• melancholic, metabolic, alcoholic (also workaholic, chocoholic etc.)

[Zaarin]

Does frog have a CAUGHT vowel or COT vowel for you? I and most people I know have a CAUGHT vowel here, but I'm increasingly hearing the COT vowel, including from my mom. Thus I have [fɹ̱ˁɒg] and my mom has [fɻɑg].

CAUGHT.

I remember hearing it with COT on Sesame Street growing up and finding that very odd. I also remember being baffled by the eye-dialect spelling "dawg" because how else would you say that?

On the other hand, I have COT for cog, gog, grog, jog, nog, and tog. But slog is CAUGHT.

Same except slog is also COT.

Do you pronounce asphalt with an ass or ash at the beginning?

[ʃ] from habit, which I'm in the process of correcting to [s].

Anybody know anything about how the pronunciation with /ʃ/ originated? There's no obvious phonetic motivation I can think of (it's not really any easier to pronounce /ʃf/ than /sf/). Is it an influence from the "h" in the spelling after the "p", or is it some connection to the word "ash"?

I would guess it comes from association with ash.

Does frog have a CAUGHT vowel or COT vowel for you?

I'm CAUGHT-COT merged, so COT. Another question for the non-merged American speakers here: what vowels do you have before "l" in the following words?

• doll, moll, loll, Sol (the Roman god), pol (clipping of "politician")
• alcohol, ethanol, methanol, parasol, aerosol
• golf, dolphin, solv- (in solve, absolve, resolve, solvent, solvency) -volv- (in evolve, revolve, involve, devolve), olfaction, olfactory
• melancholic, metabolic, alcoholic (also workaholic, chocoholic etc.)

COT [ɑ]: doll, moll? (don't actually know this word), aerosol, Sol (a nickname for Solomon), melancholic, metabolic
CAUGHT [ɒ]: loll [ɒ~ɐ], alcohol, ethanol, methanol, parasol, golf? [ɒ~ɐ], dolphin, solv-, -volv-, alcoholic
OTHER: Sol (Roman god) [ɔʊ], olfaction/olfactory [ɔ?]

Pol isn't really a word I'd use. Politician is COT, so...

[linguoboy]

Another question for the non-merged American speakers here: what vowels do you have before "l" in the following words?

I'm finding this almost impossible to do because of the effect that [ɫ] has on the preceding vowels. (I feel like several CAUGHT words could just as easily be GOAT.) Here's a first approximation:

COT/LOT/PALM: doll (n.), pol, -ol, -olic
CAUGHT: moll, loll, golf, dolphin, -solv-, -volv-
GOAT: Sol, ol-, doll (v.)

CAUGHT in -olic sounds super Canucky to me. LOT in golf sounds very New Yawk.

ETA: Another issue is that I live in Chicago now, so I'm used to a range of realisations in these words and it can be tough to sort out what's most natural for me.

[Travis B.]

LOT/PALM: doll* (n. and v.), moll*, loll*
CAUGHT: doll* (n. and v.), -ol, -olic, moll*, loll*, golf, dolphin, -solv-, -volv-
GOAT: Sol, pol, ol-

* These are in free variation between LOT/PALM and CAUGHT.