I would’ve sworn that Boss Hogg was a whole lot fatter than that. Huh.
For me, the “h” kinda slides (or elides?) into a “y.” Like VEE-yickle. But the stress on the first syllable is very light. It’s an unvoiced “h”, but functionally it sounds like a “yuh.”
Not necessarily, could just be light aspiration? The defining feature of the glottal stop is the rapid close-open of the vocal folds; we’d have to hear @Kent_Clark pronounce the word to know whether he’s doing that or just semi-aspirating the H.
I don’t hear a glottal stop, which isn’t to say that some people don’t do it. In my ears, I hear the ‘ee’ sound sliding into a ‘y’ sound and from there to a schwa.
Note, however, that aspiration is something ascribed to plosives like a glottal stop, not to fricatives like a /h/. So if we’re talking about aspiration, we’re already talking about a stop.
I wouldn’t be shocked if some people used a combo stop-fricative like /pf/ or /ts/ which would be even harder to distinguish as glottals.
I’m not an expert in those terms, so call it whatever you want. The only way I can describe it is, I don’t pronounce it “hic” and I don’t completely eliminate the h so that it comes out “-ic.” What comes out is a “(soft exhale)ic”
Yeah, if there’s any sound at all, I would still analyze it as /h/. Consonants can be softened. And ultimately /h/ is just any unvoiced vowel.
One thing I learned as a vocal major is that, if your breath makes any perceivable sound, it is caused by some sort of vocal tract restriction. A totally unrestricted breath is perceivably silent.
I wonder if your accent might actually partially palatize /h/ before that vowel in hic. That would make a clear distinction for you between a hard and soft /h/. It would be similar to the h in hue, and would have a stronger sound than the /h/ in, say, happy.
oh, and as for the other part: I personally am okay with using aspiration more generally for audible air, so I will say things like “aspirated vowel” instead of “devoiced vowel” (i.e. /h/). I find the idea that aspirated mean “aspirated release” (as in a plosive/stop) to be a bit restrictive. The consonant /h/ is produced with an aspiration of air.