I agree with @BroJames and @Barnabas_Aus, though some people round here would pronounce 'almond' with a swallowed 'l' as they would Calne, palm, etc. That, though, is a recognised dialectical quirk.
What people on both sides of the pond call a long a is actually a diphthong formed of the sounds e+i. It's all that great vowel shift which broke the link between sounds spelled with the same vowel symbol.
The walk, talk vowel is shifted towards o by the now unpronounced l. Hence UK English has the same sound in talk as torque; rhotic accents would sound the r in the latter but the vowel itself would still be the same sound, and distinct from the sound in tock. The talk/torque vowel is long and somewhat rounded; that in tock is short and unrounded.
South is said sowth like a pig with a th on the end by a good proportion of people here.
I was interested to hear accents which said "a duck on a dock" where both words sounded the same. Somewhere Minnesota I think. Also Anne and Iain said the same. Anne with 2 syllables.
Both sides of the pond, it depends if it's lay talk or linguistics talk. Lay talk calls the diphthong 'ay' (as in pay) a long 'a' - and in general defines long vowels, and their corresponding short vowels, by what happens if you add what used to be called in primary schools 'the magic e.' Short a in hat. Long a in hate. Short i in sit. Long i in site. Short e in pet. Long e in Pete. The 'magic e' lengthens it.
When you analyse those sounds phonetically, though, you realise the reality is a different matter. Those sound changes are more a spelling thing, not representing what actually happens if you lengthen those short vowel sounds. If you lengthen a short i, you in fact get an ee sound. This is shown in other European languages whose spelling is more phonetic than ours. And in international phonetic alphabet, this lengthening is represented by the use of a colon. /i:/ is pronounced ee, and is a long i. Lengthen the short a, and you get the sound like the vowel in a West Country accent pronunication of bath. Lengthen the short e, and you get a sound like the vowel in a Yorkshire accent pronunciation of 'fate'. Or kind of like the RP pronunication of air, for those who pronounce it as a monophthong, which many do these days.
As for the words with sometimes silent l in them, I also have heard some Brits pronounce the l in almond, but never in salmon. I don't pronounce the l in either.
I discovered recently (from observing a huge heated discussion on FB about it, and then doing a bit of googling) that Scottish people often pronounce 'palm' and 'calm' to rhyme with ham. It seems that in most English accents, both north and south, the l in those words is an indication to do a long ah sound, rather than a short a. Not like bath, where there is a north/south difference. The long ah in palm and calm seems universal in England (not sure about Wales), and only shortened in Scotland.
Both sides of the pond, it depends if it's lay talk or linguistics talk. Lay talk calls the diphthong 'ay' (as in pay) a long 'a' - and in general defines long vowels, and their corresponding short vowels, by what happens if you add what used to be called in primary schools 'the magic e.' Short a in hat. Long a in hate. Short i in sit. Long i in site. Short e in pet. Long e in Pete. The 'magic e' lengthens it.
When you analyse those sounds phonetically, though, you realise the reality is a different matter. Those sound changes are more a spelling thing, not representing what actually happens if you lengthen those short vowel sounds. If you lengthen a short i, you in fact get an ee sound. This is shown in other European languages whose spelling is more phonetic than ours. And in international phonetic alphabet, this lengthening is represented by the use of a colon. /i:/ is pronounced ee, and is a long i. Lengthen the short a, and you get the sound like the vowel in a West Country accent pronunication of bath. Lengthen the short e, and you get a sound like the vowel in a Yorkshire accent pronunciation of 'fate'. Or kind of like the RP pronunication of air, for those who pronounce it as a monophthong, which many do these days.
As for the words with sometimes silent l in them, I also have heard some Brits pronounce the l in almond, but never in salmon. I don't pronounce the l in either.
I discovered recently (from observing a huge heated discussion on FB about it, and then doing a bit of googling) that Scottish people often pronounce 'palm' and 'calm' to rhyme with ham. It seems that in most English accents, both north and south, the l in those words is an indication to do a long ah sound, rather than a short a. Not like bath, where there is a north/south difference. The long ah in palm and calm seems universal in England (not sure about Wales), and only shortened in Scotland.
Is the "a" in "ham" not an ash where you are, or in Scotland?
KarlLB, I* don’t pronounce ‘torque’ and ‘talk’ the same, not quite, although I can’t quite identify how they are different. I think I say ‘torque’ further back in my mouth than ‘talk’ and I slightly pronounce the ‘l’ in talk.
Another one who says torque and talk slightly differently, slight emphasis on the r and l in the respective words. Chock is a different word, completely different to chalk, the chocks that stop wheels rolling down hill.
I also say the l in almond slightly swallowed, but not in salmon. (Maybe southeastern England, but I have bits of accent from the south west, midlands and north east.)
In RP English there are, I think, three 'a' sounds. What's confusing is talking about a short one and a long one.
The short 'a' is as in 'cat. It's a single sound.
The long 'a' is as in 'calm' if you don't pronounce the 'l'. An RP speaker doesn't. It's a single sound. I think pronouncing the 'l' is largely restricted to the South West.
In RP this is the 'a' in 'bath'. In Northern English the 'a' in 'bath' is as in 'cat'.
As @fineline has said, the inhabitants of Bath, unless RP speakers, pronounce the 'a' in Bath as a longer version of the short 'a' in 'cat'. It's not the same sound as in 'cat'. The same people will probably pronounce an 'l' in 'palm'. That 'l' is a swallowed sound and slightly different from how an 'l' is when it starts a word.
The long 'a' in 'hate' is a quite different sound, and is a diphthong. It's also present in 'bathe' and 'Kate'.
Again, as @fineline has said, in some dialects that vowel is pronounced as a single sound, a long version of a short 'e'.
@NOprophet_NØprofit I think virtually everybody in the UK pronounces 'sowth' like a pig with a 'th'. How else can one pronounce it?
In RP, the vowels in 'wok' and 'walk' are different. 'Wok' has a short one and 'walk' has a long one. Both though are 'o's not some variety of any other vowel. There would be some dialects over here where the vowel in 'walk' might sound more like a long 'a', but I can't offhand think of anywhere the vowel in 'wok' would sound like 'wack'.
Likewise, the vowels in 'duck' and 'dock' are different. 'Duck' is a short 'u'. 'Dock' is the same one as in 'wok'. I think that probably applies to most, if not all, dialects here and not just RP. However, it's very difficult to generalise as pronunciations can vary widely within a few miles of each other.
Duck is a short /u/ in some dialects, but I think in RP is a central vowel, almost like /a/. I'm a bit rusty, but fineline will know. Same as butter. London, almost dack.
@mousethief, RP has the one below the ash: [a]. Though some pronounce it more like the ash. Scottish has [ä], so a bit different. It's further back, so in between a and ah, and is used for ham, bath and palm.
@Enoch, yes, that's true, people in the South West (or in the part where I live) do pronounce the l in calm if they have a regional accent. And the vowel sounds (to me) more like o, as in hot, so it sounds kind of like colm. A kind of mix between o in hot and u in duck.
@quetzalcoatl, u in duck in RP is like an upside down v in IPA. Open-mid back unrounded vowel. But I know what you mean, because in older fashioned RP, I think it was more open and forward, sounding more like an [a] - at least I notice that when I listen to Julie Andrews. And I imagine even now it probably sounds more an [a] to people in the North. But yes, more so with a Cockney or Estuary accent - if someone is putting on a Cockney accent, that is one of the things they do in an exaggerated way, making the u sounds into a sounds.
What somebody (or somebodies) upthread is trying to tell you all is that the term "long a" (long i, long o, whatever) is NOT universally the same across all English-speaking places. I was taught in Southern California to call the sound in "bate" a "long a", as contrasted with the sound in "cat" which was a short a. A bunch of you (but not all) have made it abundantly clear that you mean something totally different by "long a."
I'm bringing it up because every single one of you who continues to post about the "long a" as if we all agreed on what that meant, is adding to our confusion.
What to do, then? Well, we could do IPA. Or we could give examples each time. Or we could just carry on ignoring one another and driving each other nuts, which is most probable.
What to do, then? Well, we could do IPA. Or we could give examples each time. Or we could just carry on ignoring one another and driving each other nuts, which is most probable.
Carry on.
Or we could just drink IPA and forget the whole thing.
The long vowel thing is as Fineline explained dependent on whether you're coming at it as a layman, in which case the terminology is aimed at matching the orthography, or as a linguist, or indeed a phoneticist, in which case you're interested in the sounds. To the latter, a long vowel is the same sound (or, in any given language) nearly the same sound, but, well, longer.
In many languages these two usages pretty much align anyway, because it's a fairly logical way to organise your orthography. But English has a peculiarity; over a period roughly from Chaucer to Cromwell the long vowels all shifted, while the short vowels were largely unchanged. Google Great Vowel Shift if you're interested. The spelling of the vowel sounds didn't change, preserving a dislocation between the short and long vowels in English. Indeed, of the commonly called 'long vowels', only the sound represented by 'ee' is a pure vowel; the rest are all diphthongs. Meanwhile, the sound in food and boot (and the sound in foot and book) *are* pure vowels but get two letters to represent them. But not always; it's be rude to put down, erm, rude and put...
It's one - albeit only one - of the reasons English spelling is a mess. Essentially, written modern English is a slight modification of a particular dialect of Middle English as spelled by Norman French monks.
I can normally tell by context which one people mean, as they tend to give examples where you can work it out. Plus most people use the layman's one in this sort of discussion. Normally only in an academic setting, or a group of linguists chatting, or if you're teaching English as an additional language, is the more literal, phonetic meaning used. I am calling it the academic meaning, but I suspect for other languages it is the only meaning of the concept of a long version of a short vowel - I think the inconsistencies of the English spelling system make a lot of native-English speakers less aware of the phonology of language.
Anyway, I wouldn't use that term here in explaining a sound - only to explain the different meanings when the subject arises. It's similar to using vocabulary that has different meanings in different countries - I will find a universal term, or explain what I mean in several words, or use my term and define it, or put the other meaning in brackets.
@NOprophet_NØprofit I think virtually everybody in the UK pronounces 'sowth' like a pig with a 'th'. How else can one pronounce it?
Sarf? As in Sarf Lunnon?
In Ireland, the further south, the more it's 'sou'dt' (the opposite of 'nor'dth').
Sowth with a drawn out 'ow' sound is distinctive. For me and many here the 'ow' is a short 'u'.
Torque and talk are completely different here. There's no R sound in talk.
I see people periodically representing a 'th' with an 'f'. Never hear that here. If a French accent (Canadian French) perhaps closer to a 'd'. Heard also by me travelling in some parts of Newfoundland.
@NOprophet_NØprofit I think virtually everybody in the UK pronounces 'sowth' like a pig with a 'th'. How else can one pronounce it?
Sarf? As in Sarf Lunnon?
In Ireland, the further south, the more it's 'sou'dt' (the opposite of 'nor'dth').
Sowth with a drawn out 'ow' sound is distinctive. For me and many here the 'ow' is a short 'u'.
Torque and talk are completely different here. There's no R sound in talk.
I see people periodically representing a 'th' with an 'f'. Never hear that here. If a French accent (Canadian French) perhaps closer to a 'd'. Heard also by me travelling in some parts of Newfoundland.
It's quite common here, especially in the SE. It proved fatal for Hanratty.
There is an English thing of putting an 'r' in weird places. I used to think one guy I knew (Herefordshire) was pulling my leg every time he talked about Bark, when he meant Bach. But I've heard quite a few English people refer to Bach as Bark. In my accent it would be 'Bah-ch'.
I've also noticed in a lot of TV dramas where the actors have been coached to countrify their accents by putting weird rs in. 'Just mowin' the lorn, my lady' - instead of lawn. 'Ar'ternoon, gentlemen' instead of 'afternoon'.
The reason this gets buggered up in English is because "you" is used as both subject and object. After the word "you", it can be hard to process whether to follow it with "I" or "me".
The same problem doesn't tend to arise with other persons. We instinctively know the difference between "he" and "him", or "she" and "her". But we've pressed the word "you" into so many kinds of service that it causes confusion.
The reason this gets buggered up in English is because "you" is used as both subject and object. After the word "you", it can be hard to process whether to follow it with "I" or "me".
The same problem doesn't tend to arise with other persons. We instinctively know the difference between "he" and "him", or "she" and "her". But we've pressed the word "you" into so many kinds of service that it causes confusion.
I think it's fair to say that a representative model of English usage would suggest that the subject/object model for me/I selection is inadequate. And it goes beyond the first person. Around here, at any rate, "Me and him went to the park today" would be a perfectly naturally produced form, at least in more informal registers.
There is an English thing of putting an 'r' in weird places. I used to think one guy I knew (Herefordshire) was pulling my leg every time he talked about Bark, when he meant Bach. But I've heard quite a few English people refer to Bach as Bark. In my accent it would be 'Bah-ch'.
I've also noticed in a lot of TV dramas where the actors have been coached to countrify their accents by putting weird rs in. 'Just mowin' the lorn, my lady' - instead of lawn. 'Ar'ternoon, gentlemen' instead of 'afternoon'.
Intrusive R occurs because r after a vowel isn't pronounced in most UK accents, so Lorne and Lawn sound the same.
The reason this gets buggered up in English is because "you" is used as both subject and object. After the word "you", it can be hard to process whether to follow it with "I" or "me".
The same problem doesn't tend to arise with other persons. We instinctively know the difference between "he" and "him", or "she" and "her". But we've pressed the word "you" into so many kinds of service that it causes confusion.
I think it's fair to say that a representative model of English usage would suggest that the subject/object model for me/I selection is inadequate. And it goes beyond the first person. Around here, at any rate, "Me and him went to the park today" would be a perfectly naturally produced form, at least in more informal registers.
Well I'm sure all sorts of things go on in informal registers in different parts of the world (I don't think that would tend to happen here). But I would still argue that "I/me" confusion is a lot more common.
Including hyper-correction, where people use "I" because they think it sounds more proper or formal in contexts where, grammatically, "me" would actually be correct. Such as saying "between you and I".
The reason this gets buggered up in English is because "you" is used as both subject and object. After the word "you", it can be hard to process whether to follow it with "I" or "me".
The same problem doesn't tend to arise with other persons. We instinctively know the difference between "he" and "him", or "she" and "her". But we've pressed the word "you" into so many kinds of service that it causes confusion.
I think it's fair to say that a representative model of English usage would suggest that the subject/object model for me/I selection is inadequate. And it goes beyond the first person. Around here, at any rate, "Me and him went to the park today" would be a perfectly naturally produced form, at least in more informal registers.
Well I'm sure all sorts of things go on in informal registers in different parts of the world (I don't think that would tend to happen here). But I would still argue that "I/me" confusion is a lot more common.
Including hyper-correction, where people use "I" because they think it sounds more proper or formal in contexts where, grammatically, "me" would actually be correct. Such as saying "between you and I".
Yes, because the subject/object selection criterion is artificial for most speakers.
I've also noticed that some people (apparently trying to sound more "proper" and failing) use "myself" instead of "I" or "me" -- or perhaps they do it when they don't know which is correct.
A woman on my NextDoor group is asking people to sign her petition to be a candidate for the School Board. Ms. Education posted:
Myself and other Pro Public School Candidates have a table set up for you to come and sign.
The "I and X" construction is problematic in English. People want to avoid "me and Jim", and "I and Jim", subject position. One compromise is "Jim and I". I say "me and Jim", but this is in speech. Myself sounds Irish to me.
The confusion between "f" and "th" (and, probably, "v" and the other sort of "th") is very old. There is a village between Deal and Dover called Finglesham. It was written down, by Norman scribes, with an initial "f", as that was what they heard the locals say. However, earlier documents, written down by English scribes, who knew what the name meant, had an initial "th", because it meant "thengel's ham" or the home of a nobleman. Presumably the ceorls around his hall had a different form of English from his. (He had some lovely grave goods.)
I can normally tell by context which one people mean, as they tend to give examples where you can work it out.
The problem, of course, is that this depends on us all pronouncing the examples the same way. Ha. Haha. Hahaha.
Heh, that can be an issue, but the differences between the two versions of a long vowel tend to be such that it's usually clear - to me, at least. When someone talks about a long a, as in hate, I don't think they might possibly be pronouncing it with an ah sound. (Which in RP would be heart. A big difference between 'I hate you' and 'I heart you'!) Or if someone talks about the long i in fight, I don't wonder if they might be pronouncing it 'feet'. There are enough similarities in the various versions of English that variatioms don't tend to stretch this far. From what I've observed so far, the issue is more simply when people want to say 'Oh, but that's not a long i - you've got it all wrong!' rather than genuine misunderstanding.
I can normally tell by context which one people mean, as they tend to give examples where you can work it out.
The problem, of course, is that this depends on us all pronouncing the examples the same way. Ha. Haha. Hahaha.
Heh, that can be an issue, but the differences between the two versions of a long vowel tend to be such that it's usually clear - to me, at least. When someone talks about a long a, as in hate, I don't think they might possibly be pronouncing it with an ah sound. (Which in RP would be heart. A big difference between 'I hate you' and 'I heart you'!) Or if someone talks about the long i in fight, I don't wonder if they might be pronouncing it 'feet'. There are enough similarities in the various versions of English that variatioms don't tend to stretch this far. From what I've observed so far, the issue is more simply when people want to say 'Oh, but that's not a long i - you've got it all wrong!' rather than genuine misunderstanding.
You pick easy ones. What if someone says "a like in class"? Even in North America Canadians tend to have more ash sounds than USians -- I know of one native Torontan who says Nazi with an ash, whereas in these parts we say it with an ah. Similar for the car make Mazda. I say ah, he says æ.
Dog bites man. Man bites dog. English often can't be arsed with markers of subjects and objects.
Quite. The case system with pronouns started breaking down in OE times and it seems that case and form selection are no longer directly correlated.
Which is why we rely on word order and particles. "Give me the ball" is 100% clear. "Give the ball to me" is so clear one goes, "Um, no. I'm not giving you to the ball."
The confusion between "f" and "th" (and, probably, "v" and the other sort of "th") is very old. There is a village between Deal and Dover called Finglesham. It was written down, by Norman scribes, with an initial "f", as that was what they heard the locals say. However, earlier documents, written down by English scribes, who knew what the name meant, had an initial "th", because it meant "thengel's ham" or the home of a nobleman. Presumably the ceorls around his hall had a different form of English from his. (He had some lovely grave goods.)
The f/v/th/dh conflation made its way into Russian, since Russian has no sound corresponding to our th/dh sounds. Things with a theta in Greek get translated with an F. So you get Fyodor for Theodore, Feofan for Theophan, Foma for Thomas, Timofei for Timothy.
The "I and X" construction is problematic in English. People want to avoid "me and Jim", and "I and Jim", subject position. One compromise is "Jim and I". I say "me and Jim", but this is in speech. Myself sounds Irish to me.
I don't see the problem. "Jim and I" where you'd use "I" (subject); "Jim and me" where you'd use "me" (object). Easy rule to remember. Never understood why this is so hard.
Dog bites man. Man bites dog. English often can't be arsed with markers of subjects and objects.
Quite. The case system with pronouns started breaking down in OE times and it seems that case and form selection are no longer directly correlated.
Which is why we rely on word order and particles. "Give me the ball" is 100% clear. "Give the ball to me" is so clear one goes, "Um, no. I'm not giving you to the ball."
The confusion between "f" and "th" (and, probably, "v" and the other sort of "th") is very old. There is a village between Deal and Dover called Finglesham. It was written down, by Norman scribes, with an initial "f", as that was what they heard the locals say. However, earlier documents, written down by English scribes, who knew what the name meant, had an initial "th", because it meant "thengel's ham" or the home of a nobleman. Presumably the ceorls around his hall had a different form of English from his. (He had some lovely grave goods.)
The f/v/th/dh conflation made its way into Russian, since Russian has no sound corresponding to our th/dh sounds. Things with a theta in Greek get translated with an F. So you get Fyodor for Theodore, Feofan for Theophan, Foma for Thomas, Timofei for Timothy.
The "I and X" construction is problematic in English. People want to avoid "me and Jim", and "I and Jim", subject position. One compromise is "Jim and I". I say "me and Jim", but this is in speech. Myself sounds Irish to me.
I don't see the problem. "Jim and I" where you'd use "I" (subject); "Jim and me" where you'd use "me" (object). Easy rule to remember. Never understood why this is so hard.
Because it's not natural for many English speakers. They have to make a conscious effort to use a construction that feels unnatural as opposed to the one that feels natural.
Speaking your own native language shouldn't feel like trying to remember the formal grammar of one you've learnt. You're asking people to stop mid flow, re-cast the sentence in their mind to take Jim out, and then put the sentence back together. This isn't how language works.
Comments
Agreed.
Salmon the l is barely there.
Solder has no L.
L weak but often present in almond, never pronounced in salmon.
Same here.
It doesn't apply to salmon.
Here they sound the same, and what we call a long A is the diphthong in eight.
The walk, talk vowel is shifted towards o by the now unpronounced l. Hence UK English has the same sound in talk as torque; rhotic accents would sound the r in the latter but the vowel itself would still be the same sound, and distinct from the sound in tock. The talk/torque vowel is long and somewhat rounded; that in tock is short and unrounded.
I was interested to hear accents which said "a duck on a dock" where both words sounded the same. Somewhere Minnesota I think. Also Anne and Iain said the same. Anne with 2 syllables.
When you analyse those sounds phonetically, though, you realise the reality is a different matter. Those sound changes are more a spelling thing, not representing what actually happens if you lengthen those short vowel sounds. If you lengthen a short i, you in fact get an ee sound. This is shown in other European languages whose spelling is more phonetic than ours. And in international phonetic alphabet, this lengthening is represented by the use of a colon. /i:/ is pronounced ee, and is a long i. Lengthen the short a, and you get the sound like the vowel in a West Country accent pronunication of bath. Lengthen the short e, and you get a sound like the vowel in a Yorkshire accent pronunciation of 'fate'. Or kind of like the RP pronunication of air, for those who pronounce it as a monophthong, which many do these days.
As for the words with sometimes silent l in them, I also have heard some Brits pronounce the l in almond, but never in salmon. I don't pronounce the l in either.
I discovered recently (from observing a huge heated discussion on FB about it, and then doing a bit of googling) that Scottish people often pronounce 'palm' and 'calm' to rhyme with ham. It seems that in most English accents, both north and south, the l in those words is an indication to do a long ah sound, rather than a short a. Not like bath, where there is a north/south difference. The long ah in palm and calm seems universal in England (not sure about Wales), and only shortened in Scotland.
And here. Universally.
Is the "a" in "ham" not an ash where you are, or in Scotland?
MMM
*South east England
I also say the l in almond slightly swallowed, but not in salmon. (Maybe southeastern England, but I have bits of accent from the south west, midlands and north east.)
@NOprophet_NØprofit I think virtually everybody in the UK pronounces 'sowth' like a pig with a 'th'. How else can one pronounce it?
In RP, the vowels in 'wok' and 'walk' are different. 'Wok' has a short one and 'walk' has a long one. Both though are 'o's not some variety of any other vowel. There would be some dialects over here where the vowel in 'walk' might sound more like a long 'a', but I can't offhand think of anywhere the vowel in 'wok' would sound like 'wack'.
Likewise, the vowels in 'duck' and 'dock' are different. 'Duck' is a short 'u'. 'Dock' is the same one as in 'wok'. I think that probably applies to most, if not all, dialects here and not just RP. However, it's very difficult to generalise as pronunciations can vary widely within a few miles of each other.
Sarf? As in Sarf Lunnon?
In Ireland, the further south, the more it's 'sou'dt' (the opposite of 'nor'dth').
@Enoch, yes, that's true, people in the South West (or in the part where I live) do pronounce the l in calm if they have a regional accent. And the vowel sounds (to me) more like o, as in hot, so it sounds kind of like colm. A kind of mix between o in hot and u in duck.
@quetzalcoatl, u in duck in RP is like an upside down v in IPA. Open-mid back unrounded vowel. But I know what you mean, because in older fashioned RP, I think it was more open and forward, sounding more like an [a] - at least I notice that when I listen to Julie Andrews. And I imagine even now it probably sounds more an [a] to people in the North. But yes, more so with a Cockney or Estuary accent - if someone is putting on a Cockney accent, that is one of the things they do in an exaggerated way, making the u sounds into a sounds.
I'm bringing it up because every single one of you who continues to post about the "long a" as if we all agreed on what that meant, is adding to our confusion.
What to do, then? Well, we could do IPA. Or we could give examples each time. Or we could just carry on ignoring one another and driving each other nuts, which is most probable.
Carry on.
Or we could just drink IPA and forget the whole thing.
In many languages these two usages pretty much align anyway, because it's a fairly logical way to organise your orthography. But English has a peculiarity; over a period roughly from Chaucer to Cromwell the long vowels all shifted, while the short vowels were largely unchanged. Google Great Vowel Shift if you're interested. The spelling of the vowel sounds didn't change, preserving a dislocation between the short and long vowels in English. Indeed, of the commonly called 'long vowels', only the sound represented by 'ee' is a pure vowel; the rest are all diphthongs. Meanwhile, the sound in food and boot (and the sound in foot and book) *are* pure vowels but get two letters to represent them. But not always; it's be rude to put down, erm, rude and put...
It's one - albeit only one - of the reasons English spelling is a mess. Essentially, written modern English is a slight modification of a particular dialect of Middle English as spelled by Norman French monks.
Anyway, I wouldn't use that term here in explaining a sound - only to explain the different meanings when the subject arises. It's similar to using vocabulary that has different meanings in different countries - I will find a universal term, or explain what I mean in several words, or use my term and define it, or put the other meaning in brackets.
The problem, of course, is that this depends on us all pronouncing the examples the same way. Ha. Haha. Hahaha.
Harumph.
Sowth with a drawn out 'ow' sound is distinctive. For me and many here the 'ow' is a short 'u'.
Torque and talk are completely different here. There's no R sound in talk.
I see people periodically representing a 'th' with an 'f'. Never hear that here. If a French accent (Canadian French) perhaps closer to a 'd'. Heard also by me travelling in some parts of Newfoundland.
Ideally IPA would (a) be easy to type and (b) be more widely understood.
It's quite common here, especially in the SE. It proved fatal for Hanratty.
a plan ? or a plahn ? or a plarn ?
I've also noticed in a lot of TV dramas where the actors have been coached to countrify their accents by putting weird rs in. 'Just mowin' the lorn, my lady' - instead of lawn. 'Ar'ternoon, gentlemen' instead of 'afternoon'.
The reason this gets buggered up in English is because "you" is used as both subject and object. After the word "you", it can be hard to process whether to follow it with "I" or "me".
The same problem doesn't tend to arise with other persons. We instinctively know the difference between "he" and "him", or "she" and "her". But we've pressed the word "you" into so many kinds of service that it causes confusion.
I think it's fair to say that a representative model of English usage would suggest that the subject/object model for me/I selection is inadequate. And it goes beyond the first person. Around here, at any rate, "Me and him went to the park today" would be a perfectly naturally produced form, at least in more informal registers.
Intrusive R occurs because r after a vowel isn't pronounced in most UK accents, so Lorne and Lawn sound the same.
Well I'm sure all sorts of things go on in informal registers in different parts of the world (I don't think that would tend to happen here). But I would still argue that "I/me" confusion is a lot more common.
Including hyper-correction, where people use "I" because they think it sounds more proper or formal in contexts where, grammatically, "me" would actually be correct. Such as saying "between you and I".
Yes, because the subject/object selection criterion is artificial for most speakers.
Quite. The case system with pronouns started breaking down in OE times and it seems that case and form selection are no longer directly correlated.
A woman on my NextDoor group is asking people to sign her petition to be a candidate for the School Board. Ms. Education posted: Aack!
Heh, that can be an issue, but the differences between the two versions of a long vowel tend to be such that it's usually clear - to me, at least. When someone talks about a long a, as in hate, I don't think they might possibly be pronouncing it with an ah sound. (Which in RP would be heart. A big difference between 'I hate you' and 'I heart you'!) Or if someone talks about the long i in fight, I don't wonder if they might be pronouncing it 'feet'. There are enough similarities in the various versions of English that variatioms don't tend to stretch this far. From what I've observed so far, the issue is more simply when people want to say 'Oh, but that's not a long i - you've got it all wrong!' rather than genuine misunderstanding.
A plæn
You pick easy ones. What if someone says "a like in class"? Even in North America Canadians tend to have more ash sounds than USians -- I know of one native Torontan who says Nazi with an ash, whereas in these parts we say it with an ah. Similar for the car make Mazda. I say ah, he says æ.
Which is why we rely on word order and particles. "Give me the ball" is 100% clear. "Give the ball to me" is so clear one goes, "Um, no. I'm not giving you to the ball."
The f/v/th/dh conflation made its way into Russian, since Russian has no sound corresponding to our th/dh sounds. Things with a theta in Greek get translated with an F. So you get Fyodor for Theodore, Feofan for Theophan, Foma for Thomas, Timofei for Timothy.
I don't see the problem. "Jim and I" where you'd use "I" (subject); "Jim and me" where you'd use "me" (object). Easy rule to remember. Never understood why this is so hard.
Because it's not natural for many English speakers. They have to make a conscious effort to use a construction that feels unnatural as opposed to the one that feels natural.
Speaking your own native language shouldn't feel like trying to remember the formal grammar of one you've learnt. You're asking people to stop mid flow, re-cast the sentence in their mind to take Jim out, and then put the sentence back together. This isn't how language works.