zompist bboard

Recently I heard an interview with Rita Ora talking about Beyonce. She pronounced the <o>, which I always took to be LOT, with a clear [ɒ], instead of the expected [ɑ]. I figured it was some anomaly, until I heard the song Pink, by Aerosmith, which features the word "crayon", which Steve Tyler seemed to pronounced with, again, [ɒ] instead of [ɑ].

So what's going on here? Rounding of LOT before /n/ in GenAm? Or are these just isolated incidents?


JAL

Do said speakers talk in GA normally?

Mmm, good question. I assumed Rita Ora was American, but it seems she grew up in London. *oops* With just Steve Tyler, that doesn't leave much of a presedence...


JAL

jal wrote:So what's going on here? Rounding of LOT before /n/ in GenAm? Or are these just isolated incidents?

I sometimes have [ɒ] there as a hypercorrection, since the value around here is often [a] and I'm trying to keep that out of my speech.

You can hear this phenom in the local pronunciation of the toponym Chicago.

genam is the linguistic equivalent of a legal fiction, and the phoneme/environment in question is one of the most volatile both between and within dialects in north america

I really think "Old Rocker" is a legit dialect; a lot of them (including Steven Tyler) have an odd-sounding accent to my GenAm ears.

"crayon" is a particularly variable word so i wouldn't read too much into it

There are definitely many NAE dialects that have /ɔːn/ for on, and /ɔː/ is very commonly opened to [ɒ] in NAE.

Nortaneous wrote:"crayon" is a particularly variable word so i wouldn't read too much into it

I for one have /kræn/ therefor and have heard /ˈkreɪ̯ɑn/ therefor.