Re: USAGE: [YAEPT] (was Re: "To whom")

On 26 Jan 2005, at 9.26 pm, Mark J. Reed wrote:

> First: "could of" is a pronunciation spelling.  The phrase "could have"
> is usually shortened to "could've" which is pronounced something like
> /'kUd@v/.  There is not much, if any, difference between /@/ and /V/
> in many English dialects, other than the former being unstressed,
> therefore /'kUd@v/ sounds a lot like /'kUdVv/ = "could of".  People
> often write what they hear without analyzing it, and so write "could
> of"
> instead of "could've" or "could have".
That can't be the reason; IMD 'of' is /Ov/ when stressed, but 'could
of' still appears. The simple reason is that 've and of are pronounced
the same (when the latter is unstressed. Unless perhaps your dialect
actually doesn't allow unstressed 'of'? That'd be odd...

>
>> In my X-Sampa description, it says that /4/ is pronounced as
>>
>> "r in Spanish pero, tt American English better"
>
> Yup.
>
>> But when I learned spanish, my teacher (wich were from Mexico)
>> pronounced
>> "pero" as /pEGo/ with a "e" between /e/ and /E/
>
> I find that very odd.  I would expect /peGo/ to be the pronunciation of
> a word spelled "pego" in Spanish; the sound [G] is the usual value of
> the letter |g| between vowels. I've never heard it as a pronunciation
> of
> the Spanish |r|.
>
> Normally, Spanish |r| is pronounced [4].  This as a quick flap  of the
> tongue against the roof of the mouth.  That's is distinct from |rr| =
> [r],
> which is a trill (the same flap repeated many times very rapidly).
>
> The English word "better" is generally pronounced /'bEd.r\=/ in the
> United States and /'bE?.@/ in the United Kingdom.  But in the US, one
> of
I don't know that the glottal stop is phonemic (and I've heard evidence
that the phoneme for US [4] is actually /t/, so 'meddle' and 'mettle'
are both homophones as (what I suppose is) /mEtl=/, contrary to
intuition).

> the allophones of /d/ is [4].  Which can be confusing because in the
> UK,
> [4] is an allophone of /r/ instead.  Which is why US writers often
> write stereotypical British-accented dialogue with words like "Veddy"
> (=
> "Very").
In Australia it's usual to voice the /t/ as well, though I would say
this is subphonemic (even though it's no longer distinct from /d/). I
can quite clearly hear the difference between my voiced /t/ and [4], so
I think (for me) the phone is actually [d], and not [4]---but I could
be wrong.

A quick anecdote: When I was younger (4 or 5 yo), I remember being
confused by the difference between 'metal' and 'meddle', which might
mean I voiced my /t/ then, but it might not. I know that when I was in
the middle of high school (yr 9ish), I went through a phase when I
*didn't* voice my /t/, and I was also accused at a similar time of
sounding British; shortly after, I realised what I was doing* and
modified it ... I couldn't shake the stereotype of me sounding British
(even though no-one could say why), but people who have met me since
high school don't think I do/have never commented on it (even when it
would've been topical).

* I also realised at a similar time that when I noticed that I
pronounced el (e.g. in elementary) as [&l], I'd stopped doing that, and
started saying [el]. So I started doing it again. I doubt it was that
that marked me as sounding British, though: it's a lot subtler a
change, and it's a change apparently limited to Victoria... But on the
other hand, many Australians from different parts of the country sound
subtly British, but I wouldn't be able to put my finger on it if you
asked...

(PS: 'British' with respect to language can mean 'conservative' in
Australia, so something needn't actually be done in Britain for it to
be described as 'British'.)

>> How do you pronounce the word "cache"? He pronounces /k&_cSe­"/ but
>> I'd
>> probably pronounce it /k6"tS@/
>
> IMD the word "cache" sounds just like the word "cash": /k&S/.  I've
> never heard it pronounced with /tS)/.  (In English, the sequence |ch|
> is
> *usually* /tS)/, but it is quite often /S/, usually in French
> borrowings, or borrowings from other languages misconstrued as French).
> I've also never heard anyone pronounce the -e, so the fact that several
> others report doing so is interesting.
I say /k&iS/ (i.e. caish), but that's a spelling pronunciation. I tried
a number of pronunciations before I settled on that one, but I'm almost
certain it's the only pronunciation of heard.

--
Tristan.

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