It took me 7 seconds to type that, and it is unambiguous.
‘loss’ rhymes with ‘loss’, as in ‘He suffered a loss.’
‘ANN’ shows emphasis on this syllable, and is pronounced the same as the English name ‘Ann’.
‘jell’ sounds like ‘gel’, or the first part of ‘Jell-O’.
‘uhs’ is pronounced like the English word ‘us’.
As someone who does not know IPA, let me try to describe the pronunciation with IPA.
lɒs ændʒɛs
That took 3:40 seconds for me to find the IPA help guide, find each sound, copy each symbol, and paste each symbol. If I read the IPA on a message board, it would take a similar amount of time to find the guide, find each symbol, verify that the symbol means what I want it to mean, go back to look at the next symbol, etc.
The common way of depicting pronunciation is much faster, and in this case gives the same results.
Except that, of course, that it’s not at all unambiguous with “loss” being pronounced (in America) with two different vowels almost half the time, and a slightly different vowel with Received Pronunciation (UK.) /ɔ/ (“aw”) vs /ɑ/ (“ah”) vs /ɒ/ (like a “deeper” or more rounded “aw.”)
I would not count on that. The vowel sound is not distinguished. That does not automatically mean that “cot” sounds like the way you say “caught”. It means the sound is fluid in the range of the two. Depending on various factors, you might actually hear “cot” when a Westerner says “caught” because, not making the distinction, the sound might fall either way or even somewhere in between. Whatever sounds good.
Except, of course, the ‘Anglos’ in the OP are ones that speak American English, and the implication (since they are in the entertainment industry) is that they live in Los Angeles. The ‘lawss’ pronunciation might be used by someone with, say, a Southern accent, but not Southern California native. The ‘deeper’ sound is closer to the Spanish pronunciation, which Anglos tend not to use. In this case, ‘loss’ is unambiguous.
also, ‘u’ as in ‘us’ could be ʌ or ə instead of ɛ, which I suppose shows that one needs an ear for transcribing it. I looked in a few dictionaries and “Los Angeles” is variously listed as ending in -əs, -iːz, or just -es (Spanish version), but I didn’t see -ɛs (though am willing to give the benefit of the doubt to someone called Johnny L.A.
When Isay “loss”, it doesn’t sound like it does when yousay it. When I talk about my cousin “Ann”, it sounds different than when you talk about your cousin “Ann”. Every item in your example is ambiguous.
Now how am I supposed to know that? I’m from Chicago, and in my part of the world (and 60% of the US), “loss” is pronounced with an “aw” sound. And the “deeper” sound isn’t at all the Spanish sound. That “o” is closer to what is known as a “long o” in American English, but not quite (the American English “o” tends to be a diphthong pronounced as /oʊ/ so if you leave out the last half of it, you’ve got it.)
I have heard that syllable pronounced across the full range of short back vowels, even like “iss”. It is a trailing, unaccented syllable, so it gets short shrift.
Yes, it might be in a range of /ɑ/ to /ɔ/ (and perhaps beyond). They’re allophonic in that dialect. But I can at least express the difference and range that corresponds to the pronunciation of those words in that dialect.
IPA says æ is a short-a sound, like in ‘cat’. I’ve heard several people pronounce ‘cat’ as ‘kay-at’. So does æ make an ‘a-ya’ sound? It’s not supposed to. But if you’re just looking at the table, and your pronunciation of ‘cat’ is ‘kay-at’, then you would naturally conclude that æ is pronounced that way.
IPA may be useful if English is not your native language and you’re trying to learn. It may be useful if you’re studying linguistics. For casual conversations on a message board, it’s too time-consuming.
Clearly we are not going to agree on this, and I’m tired of arguing the point.
Of course not. What you’re noticing exactly is the problem with “plain English” explanations of sound. That’s the lay explanation using your “plain English” explanation of the sound, and that exactly pinpoints the problem with plain English explanations.
ðə dɪfɹənts ɪz beisɪkli ðət ɑi sʌund mɔɹ bɹɪtɪʃ ðən ju du
(The difference is basically that I sound more British than you do.)
lɒs
lɔs
etc
I’ve never tried IPA on my phone before, had to download and learn a new keyboard - still the whole thing only took me 10 minutes, starting from looking for something to download. Next time would be much faster.
I think not. When I speak fast/sloppy, they can be a lot of elision – “the” may become just its consonant sound with only a vague hint of a vowel sound – but my vowels stay close to their position. I seriously doubt that I would drop a mid or front vowel to the ə / ʌ back vowel level, though they might wander a bit in their own levels.
