I can’t tell the difference between the way Quebecers pronounce syllable-medial “a” (as in “sac”) and the English /æ/ as in sack.
My English dictionary says the Spanish a is “like in cat”. Since my english phonetics were 25 years ago, I don’t remember whether that’s the one in apple…
Norwegian. I mean, it’s “our” letter æ that’s used to represent the sound. In a lot of words the letter ‘e’ is pronounced that way as well.
Even in “Jag har den ära”?
Thai definitely has it. When writing Thai words with the Roman alphabet, the system I prefer is to spell the sound with an “ae,” to distinguish it from the “a” sound in “father,” which is written as simply “a.” For instance, “phaendin” is “earth” or “ground;” “phaendinwai” is “eathquake;” “khaen” is “arm.” Each of those instances of “ae” is a definite “a”-as-in-“flat” sound, not an approximation. There’s a distinct written vowel marking it, but I cannot re-create it here.
The “ae” transcription is common but not universally followed. Often, the “a” sounds in both “father” and “flat” will simply be rendered “a.” Helps to be able to read the Thai alphabet.
I can’t say I’ve actually noticed this.
From what I hear, the Spanish a is not like the General American English a. The Spanish a is represented by the IPA symbol a.
Here’s a Wikipedia reference on IPA symbols:
So, “some” dialects of English have it, and my guess is those dialects pronounce the a in cat and father the same, which are two very very different sounds in GA English.
Yes:
cat – [kæt]
casa – [kasa]
In the U.S., probably anywhere you go, [kat] (or more typically, [ka?]) would signify the portable thing you sleep on. Maybe in Britain or Commonwealth countries it means the animal. (Also, in places like California, it’s pronounced the same as the past tense of <catch>.)
Thanks for all the responses. It appears that my original question has been satisfactorily answered: Yes, the sound appears in other languages.
The Thai letter that re-creates the “a” sound in “plan” and “map” is on this chart of long vowels here. First one on the left in the second row. If you click on it, you can hear it. "It will say “sara ae,” “sara” meaning “vowel.”)
BTW: On that chart, you will see figures in black and in blue. The blue figures are the vowels, and the black figure – the same figure each time – merely represents the next letter in the spelling. But no matter what, the vowel is always pronounced AFTER that letter, even if it’s written before it and not after. That’s right. Thai is a bit odd in that depending on which one it is, a single vowel can be written either before or after the letter it is pronounced after. In the case of some of them, you’;; notice, the single vowel is actually written on BOTH sides AND above; these are diphthongs, such as “ia” and “ua,” and still pronounced after the letter. Takes some getting used to but quite easy once you get the hang of it.
EDIT: Actually, when you click on it, it says “sala ae.” It is spelled with the Thai letter “r,” though, and is rendered with an “r” when spelled phonetically in English. This is the classic mixture of Rs and Ls, which one hears often over here.
The [æ] sound exists in Bengali, but has no letter of its own. There are at least three or four different ways of spelling it.
It can be heard in the Bengali work for “one,” ek. In Bengali, it’s pronounced [æk], but in other Indian languages, such as Hindi, the counterpart is pronounced as it is spelled, [ek].
How about the “th” sound, both the soft one in “theater” and the hard one in “the”? Now that seems to be unique to English.
Languages that have both sounds:
Arabic (most dialects, as far as I can tell)
Greek (well, modern Greek; ancient Greek only had the ‘hard’ sound, represented by the letter ‘theta’)
Icelandic
But yes, you’re right; both the unvoiced ‘th’ (as in ‘theater’) and the voiced ‘th’ (as in ‘the’) are rather rare as far as phonemes go.
Thanks for that! Had no idea about those languages. Icelandic surprises me, because isn’t that a Nordic language? The other ones, such as Swedish and Danish, don’t have that, do they?
This lesson only works if “ah” and “aw” have merged in your accent.
The rest of us gave them up for lent. Icelandic is like a living fossil language.
Icelandic language - Wikipedia
Icelandic still uses separate letters for the two ‘th’ sounds.
Aren’t they also in European Portuguese and Castilian Spanish?
The voiced and unvoiced “th” sound is present in Castillian Spanish. I don’t know about Portuguese, though. It seems there’s a voiced “th” that appears for “d” in certain parts of northern and central Portugal, from what I can find online, there doesn’t seem to be an unvoiced “th.” Here’s one source.
Actually, I find that we Americans over-“foreignize” other languages. For instance, My wife and I have a German friend named Franzi. We always pronounce it “Frahnzi” [fron-zee] (like the old Hans und Franz skit on SNL). She’s never corrected us. But when we’ve met her German friends, they all, invariably, pronounce it Franzi (like France-y), with the apple-a sound. Likewise, a former co-worker whose family was Jordanian was named Amani. We all pronounced it “uh-monn-ee”–like Giorgio Armani. But when I ran into some of her family friends (also Jordanian), they pronounced it “uh-mann-ee” with a “man” sound, not a “mon” sound.
Sometimes, the vowels are not so exotic.
I don’t know why those German people called your friend “France-y”, I grew up in German household and the name (in Germany) is pronounced more like your first pronunciation “Fronz-ee”, maybe more like Frahntz-ee, but there are regional dialect in German as well. Also, I have seen my parents German friends start to Americanize their own pronunciations of German words. I think it comes from being around Americans too long.
In a nutshell, I don’t think your friend corrected you because you didn’t need correcting. And of course, you could always ask .