Gracias!
Miracles aside, one has to wonder, though, why the wolf cared.
Then tell me what the objective length of a syllable is. There is, of course, no such thing. Phonetic information like this is all in the mind of the listener.
Something similar is true of your claim that no one in the UK says “strawburry.” You had to (1) imagine what these sounds are like in your head (2) compare that to how you perceive other people in the UK speaking. Both of these processes are subjective. I know you didn’t get some sort of objective computer program who has the one correct interpretation of how “strawburry” sounds, and then record ever other person in the UK saying that word, and then compare the waveforms.
You keep asserting objectivity where it cannot exist. And then try to claim it’s people not understanding you because we tell you that you’re wrong. No, I understand your claim entirely. You claim that you are talking about how people objectively speak. And that claim is false, because such does not exist.
You talk about how you get frustrated or even angry. Consider how you’d feel if you were explaining a concept you had actually had multiple classes in in college, and one person kept asserting their incorrect statement was just “misunderstood.”
It might explain why I waited a few days to hope you might think more clearly about this.
There’s also this UK thread where a couple UK English speakers self-identify the pronunciation as “strawburry,” so it’s not just an American phenomenon that interprets that syllable as possibly a “u.” Once again, not saying that’s how SciFi Sam says it, but what we hear and how we describe it varies by individual:
https://www.thefretboard.co.uk/discussion/48149/how-do-you-eat-a-strawberry
Pull the green bit off. Stuff the red bit in yer gob. Chew. Swallow. Job done
Pronunciation: STRAWBurry.
Like jamboree. As in strawberry jamboree. Like a straw burrito. Like tambourine.
Straw-BREE is also listed as a pronunciation of course.
Which is “right” or “wrong” doesn’t matter. That’s what some people here and what some people find the best way to render it in a non-technical (i.e. not using a pronunciation alphabet) manner. So when someone says “I hear that word as ‘strawburry’” I believe them. Similarly, I believe “but we don’t actually say ‘strawburry.’” Those two statements are not in conflict.
The main subject of my degree was linguistics, and I taught EFL for twenty years, so you’re not the only one who “took multiple courses in college, BigT.”
However, I am not going to respond to you any more on this topic. We disagree, we will clearly continue to disagree, and you are being extremely patronising and unpleasant.
Pulykamell - it is odd that they wrote it that way, but I’m honestly just too tired of this discussion to go back to it again.
Fair enough. I 'm not entirely sure we actually disagree all that much about anything – it’s just an odd conversation that is best put to bed.
shakes hands, gets in the pints
notices typo in previous post, groans
I had “hear” as “here” a couple posts up – it’s all good.
Yeah, I don’t expect anyone on here to be typo-free all the time. It’s a little unfortunate there was one in that particular post though!
Well … I’m not even sure what the typo is. And there’s Gaudere’s Law to cover ya, anyway.
Where is Guadere when you need him.
(I bet I screwed that up twice!)