Thanks for that explanation. I confess I don’t have much time for the prescriptivist approach as you have described it. For the written form, yes. I see the sense in agreeing a spelling for when the word has to be understood in silent isolation…but the spoken word? nah! variety is the spice of life as far as I’m concerned.
Some background may be helpful here. I grew up in the north-east of England in a rural location where the word “home” could be pronounced very differently if you cared to travel just 20 miles in any of three directions. Not surprisingly I’ve grown up with a fondness for dialect and accent.
I don’t think anyone has. I’m suggesting that the thread has long ago reached the point of more heat than light seeing as there is no standard to which we can refer. And this is how most pronunciation threads end up. They never really progress past the point we reached some pages ago.
And I think your suggestion is wrong. And more than a little obnoxious and high-handed. This thread, like many others, has gone through waves of being informative or uninformative, but overall it continues to offer insights into certain individuals’ perceptions. Indeed, as it has gone on, it has gotten generally more informative, as now more contributors are at least trying to describe things with IPA symbols.
Strangely enough, this statement of yours:
… seem to suggest that you haven’t read this thread very closely at all, because in terms of objective description, it has taken a few steps backward where others have managed to take a few steps forward.
When we have gotten to the point that we are describing pronunciations more accurately, for you to then start using uninformative terms along the lines of “well, it sounds like ‘inserting an R’ to me because the vowel is changing” is almost like the opposite of fighting ignorance.
When we have gotten to the point that we are distinguishing among several low vowels using symbols—æ, a, ä, ɑ, ɒ, and so on—for you to then step in and say “inserting an R” when there is no way to symbolize this pronunciation with any kind of R symbol (r, ɹ, ʁ, ʀ, χ, ɾ, ɽ, etc.) seems like a deliberate attempt to sabotage any progress toward informativeness that has been made in this thread.
Another post that seems extremely self-important. A lot of people on these boards take quite a bit of interest in language, and people who are interest in language are often very interested in accents and pronunciation and are interested in discussing them.
Some people, like Johanna, are professionally trained in this and related subjects. Some have less in the form of credentials but still manage to speak with intelligence and informatively.
To the extent that any particular post uses terms that do not meet a standard of making an attempt to be objective and informative, go ahead and call it out. But a general denunciation of this thread is, as I said, more than a little obnoxious.
But that’s how I say those words. (Associated with the wrong IPA symbol?)
You know, it does stand out to me that “arm” and “father” are not actually using the same vowel (quite independent of the r). And “call” and “four” are definitely different vowels, so I wonder why they are listed together.
Thinking about it, if I were to make a distinction between cot and caught, it would be to make a dipthong of the second word, something like cah-uht. I suppose there is a subtle difference in father and calm, not attributable to just the l. But it’s much less distinct than the difference between father and fat.
And that was my point to SCAdian. The letter combo “ah” represents different sounds to different speakers, so map to different IPA symbols.
I knew this was going to be a problem. The first word in the song is “do”, as in “Do-Re-Mi”.
Perhaps I should have put “do” in italics or something. I do know that “do” is typically pronounced different than “doe”. For me, it is “do” = “dew”, and there is no “dyoo”.
:smack:
I would be happy to have a better IPA link. I use that one because it has sample words, American and British typical samples, and the sounds can be played directly from that page, without successive page loads. The Wiki pages require opening the reference chart, opening the page for the specific sound, then playing the sound off that page. And sometimes it’s actually loaded another page before the sound will play - I think if I rush the second click before the page fully loads, it treats it as a click to the “closeup”. Anyway, that’s tedious and annoying for cross referencing.
The think the standard alternate to “poss-tuh” is something like “pass-tuh”. That is what we are trying to avoid. But at least no one is saying “piss-tuh”.
In rhotic speech, even though the r is pronounced, it still does colour the sound of the vowel that precedes it, at least IME. When I say “arm”, the r tends to raise the vowel a little because my tongue is coming up to finish the syllable. So, in the end, it does not seem sensible to use an r-terminated syllable as a pronunciation reference, solely because of inconsistency in pronunciation.
Sheesh, now this gets into territory that starts to make my head hurt. When you type “poss-tuh”, you are wandering into that weird cot/caught territory. In much of the American Midwest, the vowel in “cot” sounds like the IPA “a”, so “poss-tuh” in that accent seems to me much closer to what the British are talking about, but “pasta” is pronounced in most of America with more of a “ä” sound.
How ever you slice it, at least we can understand each other, most of the time. Were it not for context and tone, we would be screwed.
Ahh, just a reminder that some of those with rhotic accents accused us non-rhotics of an “intrusive R” when pronouncing something like “tuna oil”.
I challenged the “intrusive R” accusation and said it was not deliberately inserted but was a side effect of a lack of hiatus transition between the vowels, and that it was merely “perceived” as an “R” by rhotic speakers.
You complained, in an earlier post (#199) “It doesn’t matter whether an intrusive R is perceived as being deliberate. All that matters is that it’s there.”
But when Novelty Bobble says a similar thing “That long drawing out of the word certainly sounds like an “r” to me. It corresponds to exactly my pronunciation of “part” “car” “hard” etc. So the only way I can describe it is by reference to the insertion of an r.”
He is condemned for using “uninformative terms”!
I also don’t believe Novelty Bobble was being at all “high handed” at all in his discussion of the course of this thread, he’s just pointed out the way it wanders and weaves through different parts of the issue, and repeats some. That’s why I find it strangely compelling !
Yes, because in one case, there is an actual R phone being inserted (“intrusive R” is the proper term for the phenomenon) and in one case there isn’t. It isn’t a matter of perception, but fact.
So how do the Brits pronounce “fought”? For instance, out of context, could one take the statement “I fought furiously” to mean that perhaps the speaker should consider reviewing their eating habits?
Do you accept that I hear a very clear “r” sound in the US word “pasta”?
And that the first syllable is the equivalent of the British English word “par”?
Now it may not have a proper name but it is obviously there.
Yes, I agree, unless we are explicitly talking how to pronounce r words, avoid them as examples for pronunciation guide. I see with “arm” a tendency for a slight dipthong - ah-urm. Similarly, I think we should avoid using words with l after the vowel, such as “palm”, for the same reason. L seems to function for some people as a vowel modifier rather than a consonant.
Okay, I just listened to the Wiki sounds for /a/, /ä/, /ɑ/, and /ɶ/. I gotta say, those first three sound a hell of a lot alike to me. The last one is more “uh” than “ah”, but the first three are so similar I’m not sure what is different. I mean, there’s a hint of pitch variation, but I would call them all the same vowel. Any of those three would be acceptable vowels for “pasta”. I suppose, after several iterations, the first is more similar to how someone from Boston speaks (Boston), and that accent often gets immitated as “pæsta”. But it’s subtle.
By the way, I hate that chart because I have no reference points to clue what symbol approximates the sound I wish to imitate. At least that other chart tries to give me words, even if it mismatches a few.
For the purposes of this discussion, I think the “r” sound is defined as a rhotic consonant. There is no rhotic consonant in the American pronunciation of “pasta,” nor the British pronunciation of “par.” This is not a matter of perspective. There is no consonant pronounced there. The spelling may indicate how the vowel is vocalized, but the “r” is not pronounced in a way that the “r” in words like “radio” and “rat” are.
I should say, for non-rhotics, the “r” seems to function the way the silent “e” on the end of words functions: it indicates how the prior vowel is pronounced, but isn’t itself pronounced.
There are very few dialects that put a rhotic “r” in “pasta”. I don’t know of any specifically, but I suspect a dialect that says “warshes” might.
I suspect “fought” is pronounced f**awt /fɒt/, while “fart” is pronounced *faht */fɑt/.
I’m not suggesting it is the only “r” sound. Only that it is one variant of it. It sounds to me like “par” or “are” not sure how much more of an “r” sound it needs to be.
Anyhow. That is not my problem with threads like this. Others say that they can be informative but I’m not convinced. We seem to go round in circles precisely because there is an attempt to use exact definitions and sweeping generalisations that simply don’t fit.
Now it is interesting to discuss these subjects, I love language and accents/dialects etc. But a message board thread just doesn’t suit these discussions at all. Better to do it in a pub where I can demonstrate exactly the sound I mean.
IPA is an approximation but it can’t capture the subtleties of speech. It is rather like trying to use standard english to discuss how food tastes or what a painting looks like or how music sounds or how a play is performed. You can cover some basics, talk about nuts and bolts and get a general point across but the only real way to discuss it in full is to experience it first hand.
And “call” and “four” are definitely different vowels, so I wonder why they are listed together. 
