Regarding (a), what’s stopping you from learning?
Regarding (b), I’ve never bothered to learn how to type the symbols. I just go to the Wikipedia page for a particular symbol and copy and paste. It’s not like I ever have to type large blocks of text, so it doesn’t bother me.
That’s what I do, too, but there is an ASCII solution to this. I can’t remember the name of it offhand, but it’s the one that uses symbols like /@/ to represent /æ/.
ETA: Whoops, I got that wrong. /@/ is the schwa. I was thinking of SAMPA or X-SAMPA. I prefer IPA because I’m familiar with it and it is most widely used.
What is the RP for “err”? How do most Brits say it? Most Americans seem to pronounce it exactly like “air”, which I cannot bring myself to do since my English teacher trained me to say “ur”.
I think of X-SAMPA as basically just a way to notate IPA in ASCII, and not really a different system, as such. I’m alright with it if people use it; it’s easier than copy-and-pasting the actual IPA symbols, and anything along these lines is way better than “I mean ‘pAH-ster’'”…
Sorry about that – it was me. As **pulykamell **intuited, I was trying to use a to mean “the pronunciation of this letter in Spanish and Italian orthography – and I can get away with this, even though I don’t know the IPA symbol for this sound, because it pretty much always represents the same sound in the written version of these languages.”
I was being lazy, in other words. I should have learned the IPA symbol for this sound, and used that, instead of mixing up apples and oranges.
[ɜː]. So like “ur”, basically, without the final “r” in non-rhotic RP.
That’s funny! If I just let my face relax, and don’t try to form any particular phoneme at all, and just vocalize, that’s about the sound which comes out of my mouth, I think.
So, I probably have said “err” in my sleep, or while in a pre-verbal drunken stupor.
Oh, I understand that. It’s just that now I’d have to look up and learn all the X-SAMPA versions of IPA symbols, and I think more people are familiar with IPA.
Thank you. For me, the first vowel in pasta is exactly the same vowel in hot, cot, father, and bother. My IPA referenceshows “hot, rock” with this symbol /ɒ/[FONT=Trebuchet MS], and father with this symbol /ɑ:/[/FONT], but I’m hard pressed to tell the difference.
So there’s the song, “Do, a dear, a female deer…” that has the line “fa, a long, long way to go”.
That always seemed a real stretch to me, until I learned about non-rhotics. Suddenly, that line makes more sense.
Pass, bath, raft, hat, and batter are all the same for me, whereas father and calm are the same as each other, but different than all the rest.
Here’s something I want to know: any of you who use “arse”, are you rhotic or non-rhotic? Does that come out more like ahss?
Thinking about it, there are times I make a distinction. Blah vs saw, for instance, those sounds are going to be slightly different. But your two letter representations are not clear. If you wish to be precise, use IPA. Because, as we have seen, your “aw” may not be my “aw”. Writing down “aw” and expecting me to hear what you do when you say that is exactly the point I was making.
I use
and copy/paste.
“I like to uh on the side of caution”?
The sound samples don’t make the difference clear? The ɒ indicates a rounded vowel. Even if I don’t make the distinction in my own speech, I can hear the difference between ɒ and ɑ.
I have to admit, the American pronunciation of /ɒ/ there doesn’t sound like what I think of as an /ɒ/. This is more like it for me. and this is the unrounded version. Press play on the right to hear the sounds.
Oh, are you talking about the links to sound samples in Irishman’s link? It’s kind of set up weird, the link for the “American” /ɒ/ are actually giving the American pronunciation of “hot” and “rock,” which use /ɑ/, not /ɒ/. So those links are misleading. Well, actually, they’re wrong if you want to push it. Where you hear the difference is in the “British” links for /ɑ/ and /ɒ/.
OK, that’s what I hear. It’s a bit confusing the way it’s set up.
I agree that the pronunciations of hot, rock and father at that site sound the same. However, while that site uses the same symbol for both arm and father, the vowels as spoken there do not sound the same to me.
Agree with you on the first five, but for me father and calm are on opposite sides of the cot/caught line (father and cot vs calm and caught).
“ah” = ɒ
“aw” = ɔ: (as in call; the vowel used in four sounds very different to me)
See, for me, “ah” is /ɑ/. While /ɒ/ is not exactly “aw” in my American dialect, it’s closer to “aw” than “ah,” the way I hear it. Did you click on the samples I posted above?
Okay, I’ll bite: How do you go to the Wikipedia page for a particular symbol in order to copy and paste it, without first typing the symbol you’re going to copy into the Wikipedia search block?
To me
/a/ and /ɑ/ = varieties of “ah”
/ɒ/ and /ɔ/ = varieties of “aw”
Personally, I just Wikipedia for “English Phonology” or “IPA” or something like that and find it on the respective page, or link throughs.
I do exactly what Pulykamell said, except I start here
But actually, if you look at Irishman’s link, there’s a handy way to input IPA characters and copy and paste them – here
The first word in that song is “Doe”. The word “do” is typically pronounced differently (rhymes with “dew”, IME).
Seems to me that every time I have heard “arse”, it has been rhoticized, possible because the speaker, who is almost always non-rhotic, wants to emphasize it.
Bear in mind that that sentence is not a good example. The vowel sounds between “err” and “on” will receive the intrusive-r, so it will be “uhr”, not “uh”, or perhaps “uh ron”.