I lived in Israel for five years, hanging out mostly with other English-speakers. After a few years, I got pretty good at identifying Americans / English / South Africans just from their accents. Then I met a guy whose accent I could not place at all. My puzzlement ended when he told me he was Australian. Quite proud of myself, I was!
Reduction! That’s the word I was looking for. It seems to me that vowel reduction is perhaps the key feature of English.
I think that perhaps part of the problem is that Chinese is transcribed using characters (b, d, g, j) that look like voiced consonants to us. Why is it spelled “Beijing,” if there are no voiced consonants?
If the “j” is unvoiced, then it fits.
Russian does that a whole lot and I guess that when people imitate what Russian sounds like they imitate that, and soft consonants.
Mandarin has tons of sh- sounds. Cantonese, not nearly as much. Are you sure Crouching Tiger is in Cantonese? I’m pretty sure it is in Mandarin, but I don’t remember.
I’m probably just missing an obvious joke. But … eh?
Heh, yeah! The same people who drop /r/-coloring in NAE also often add it when others wouldn’t. Kennedy did the same thing when he said “Cuba.” I’ve heard Australians do it too. If I have time I’ll look around to see if there is any research about this.
Yes, I agree, it’s one of the most distinguishing features of the language. Compare how we pronounce these two words:
(A) photography
(B) photograph
In (A), we reduce the vowel in the first syllable, because it isn’t stressed. We pronounce it as /ə/. The vowel is reduced.
In (B), we pronounce the vowel “purely.” (As /o:/) Why? Well that’s the way English inherited Greek words. It’s a fairly consistent pattern.
So we should acquit?
Personally, I think the terms “hard” and “soft” don’t do justice to describe the sounds that humans speak. For consonants, I suggest voiced vs. unvoiced, aspirated vs. non-aspirated, stopped, etc.
Come to think of it I think it is in Mandarin.
Mostly for convenience, because Cantonese/Chinese makes a distinction between aspirated and unaspirated stops (e.g. the difference in the t between top and stop). The alternative is to transcribe them as p/ph, t/th, etc. While this would be arguably more accurate from a linguistic standpoint, I’m sure this will just cause a different confusion due to the way ph- and th- are pronounced in English.
An unvoiced “j” is like the “j” in “Jack”. A voiced “j” is like the “j” in “Jacques”. Interestingly, “judge” has two identical sounds (both unvoiced) spelled differently.
This doesn’t match my understanding of the terms “voiced” and “unvoiced.” Or else it doesn’t match my understanding of the pronunciations of “Jack” and “Jacques.” They’re both voiced
The sound in “Jack” is a voiced post-alveolar affricate [dʒ]. Its unvoiced counterpart is the sound that starts “check.”
The sound in “Jacques” is a voiced post-alveolar fricative [ʒ]. Its unvoiced counterpart is the sound that starts “shack.”
This strikes me as seeing one level of confusion and ratcheting it up to a higher level of confusion. We already have a convention of transliterating aspirated and unaspirated sounds by using h as a distinguisher. Yes, they were often misinterpreted, but at least there was some consistency of misinterpretation. The Chinese solution seems to me simply crazy. But I suppose the Chinese should do things the way it suits them. What I don’t understand is why we’ve adopted this standard into English for no reason.
If you want to hear people speaking what sounds like English, but without using any actual English words, watch “Dawson’s Creek”
No, they’re both voiced. Their unvoiced counterparts would be “chack” and “shack”.
The first “o” in “photograph” isn’t a pure vowel, but a diphthong.
But your point stands, that the vowel is realised differently depending on whether it is stressed or unstressed.
This phoneme varies a lot from place to place. In NAE, it’s at best a glide–I apologize for generalizing too much. In North America, it isn’t a diphthong. And when I throw around the word “pure” I consider diphthongs to fall into that category anyway. It’s a question of reduction. Here, it’s a mid back rounded vowel–few people in the States speak it as a diphthong.
As for voicing, it’s pretty easy to determine. Put your hand on your throat and say the sound in a normal utterance. If you feel vibration, it’s voiced.
Really? I have mostly heard it as a diphthong. Actually, I usually hear it as a triphthong in Lower Midwest (i.e., not Michigan/Wisconsin/Minnesota), Appalachian, and Southern accents [əɔʊ].
Anyway, perhaps “full vowel” is a better term for what we’re talking about than “pure vowel.”
When I taught college, I had many foreign students. They liked me for some reason.
I asked several of them this question.
2 said English was a ‘hissing’ language. When they listened to it before they knew it there was a much HISSSSSS HISSSSSSS.
I turned down the radio once so that I could hear it but not loud enough to understand…and they were right! 
Would you say it’s the same vowel as in “go”?
Good idea.