Search results for 'tag:British English tag:Consonants' matching tags 'British English' and 'Consonants'

Re: ::: Why not to double the last letter !!? :::

Cool Breeze — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 10:23:43 GMT

The_Ancestral_Eagle

1) - What about ( happen / open ) in the British English !!?

Can the last consonant be doubled !?

2) - What is a diphthong ?

1. Why don't you believe us? Nothing was said about n being an exception in British English, so it's not an exception!

2. You have the Internet at your disposal. It is replete with information. Type diphthong in a search engine and you'll get lots of answers. Here is one.

Re: ::: Why not to double the last letter !!? :::

The_Ancestral_Eagle — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 08:07:58 GMT

Thanks a lot CB & CJ ..

So, it's a matter of stress .. !

But !!

1) - What about ( happen / open ) in the British English !!?

Can the last consonant be doubled !?

2) - What is a diphthong ?

Thanks again

Re: ::: Why not to double the last letter !!? :::

Cool Breeze — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 20:24:49 GMT

The consonant is doubled if there is a short vowel between consonants in a stressed syllable:

forgetting, swimming

If the syllable is not stressed, doubling doesn't occur:

targeting

No doubling occurs if the vowel is pronounced as a diphthong:

growing

In British English - illogically - l is doubled even in an unstressed syllable in similar words:

travelling

There are numerous cases where usage is unsettled and you have a choice:

focused / focussed

Re: a(n) university ??

yizhivika — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 22:38:19 GMT

Yes, Yankee's comments above pretty much speak for British English usage, as well as for American English. The initial u in the 'consonant' examples given by Yankee is invariably pronounced as yoo.

As for British usage of 'An historic(al)', you will still occasionally find it, and I think one is supposed to drop the h when pronouncing it, i.e. "An 'istoric(al)", but I suspect it'll die out eventually, and we'll all use "A historic(al)" instead.

Re: Mimicking an actor's accent

Kooyeen — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 20:27:59 GMT

Hi,
yes, I remember you asked about him. I'm not an expert at all, but I can tell you my opinion, as a learner.
I agree it's a good accent for those who are interested in British English. I don't find any annoying features in his accent (=features I don't like). It doesn't sound posh to me, his intonation seems to be normal and not exaggerated like in annoying posh accents.

3:54 - That is strange, yes. <-- Tapped T in "that is". I don't know how many accents have this feature and to what extent because I don't really know enough about British English.
3:57 - Yeah, that's a little weird <-- Glottal stops in "little". But they are not everywhere... either he's changing hir accent while he speaks, or those glottal stops are only found in certain special cases in his accent.
He doesn't release final T's. - Notice the difference between his final consonants and the hosts' ones, especially the woman's (the hosts sound like they overpronounce final consonants to me, since I'm mainly used to American English).

Just my non-native opinion, though. I don't know how difficult it is for a learner to pick up such an accent, because I don't know how widespread those kinds of accents are in the UK and in the media in general. Good luck.

Re: fair-haired

Pter — Mon, 19 May 2008 10:02:06 GMT

Yes, there are regional variations in American English. Do you know which accent is chosen by MW as the reference in the pronunciation keys. Is it General American?

My problem is that, as I have mentioned before, they are indeed denoted differently in British English. The first one is a simple vowel while the second one is a diphthong / e /. The question is whether the diphthong / e / ONLY occurs before an R. If it occurs before some other consonants, such as D, L, T, N ( / -et /, / -el /, / -ed /, / -en / ), using / er / to indicate a different sound from / e / is not a good idea because you'll have problems showing the differences between / -et /, / -el /, / -ed /, / -en / and / -et /, / -el /, / -ed /, / -en / respectively.

Certain combination of sounds just do not exist in English and that's why they don't need to use diacritic to indicate that the P in SP is non-aspirated whereas an initial P is aspirated. The bottom line is that the pronunciation keys have to be non-ambiguous. This is the same reason why they don't need to use diacritic to indicate tapped intervocalic T or final dark L. (Clear L at syllabic final position does not exist.)

I did a search in my pronunciation dictionary and found that the combinations / -et / and / -el / do not exist. / -ed / and / -en / only exist when the spelling has an R between / e / and the following consonant. Since British English is non-rhotic, the corresponding American pronunciation would have an R before that consonant, resulting in / rd / and / rn /. So, / e / ONLY occurs before an R! As a result, using / er / in American English to represent the counterpart of the British English / e / is non-ambiguous after all!

After going through all these discussions, I finally found out the reasons.

Kooyeen, many thanks indeed for discussing this issue with me. Without your insights, I would not have been able to find out the underlying issues that has been troubling me.

EDIT:

It appears that / e / was the result of the influence of the following R sound on the / e / sound. It is therefore actually the equivalent of / er / in American English. However, because British English is non-rhotic, the R influence results in the / e / becoming a diphthong, i.e. a schwa is added after the / e / to become / e /.

EDIT 2:

While adding the above EDITed text, I just found that what I guessed was probably right.

http://www.bl.uk/learning/langlit/sounds/text-only/received-pronunciation/london/

The vowels of youth
Listen first to the vowel sound she uses in the words air, there, their, where, somewhere and parents. In traditional forms of RP, they would be pronounced with a diphthong â that is two vowel sounds. Older RP speakers would start with an <e> sound â as in bed â before drifting into a weak vowel rather like the initial sound in about. This type of pronunciation, also applied to words such as dare, hair and bear, was until relatively recently common in many English accents. The diphthong emerged once speakers began to omit the <r> sound at the end. Speakers throughout the UK once pronounced this <r> sound, but it is increasingly restricted to speakers in the West Country and far South West of England, a small area of Lancashire and most of Scotland and Ireland. It is also present in most US English accents. The <r> sound was initially replaced by the weak vowel at the end of the diphthong, but nowadays most younger RP speakers omit this final part of the diphthong and simply use a long <e> sound â thus shared is pronounced with exactly the same vowel as in shed, only the vowel is noticeably longer. This demonstrates perfectly how successive sound changes can radically alter the pronunciation of a set of words. Most RP speakers, like Michelle, now only distinguish between pairs such as fairs and fez or flared and fled simply by vowel length. Older speakers tend to use a diphthong for the first word in each pair.

It means that the Received Pronunciation that I have been learning (and indicated on all the dictionaries) is only that of the older generation! What a surprising finding from this simple question of fair-haired!

Re: fair-haired

Pter — Sat, 17 May 2008 17:27:16 GMT

Thanks again for your patience in explaining that to me. I think I know what you are talking about. This also happens for the length of vowels before voiceless consonants vs voiced consonants, e.g. bat vs bad. Yes, you are right, the vowel quality is often affected by the following consonant.

My problem is that, the pairs of words we discussed before are denoted with different IPA symbols in British English, which is mostly what I learnt, while they are denoted with the same symbol in American English. My only conclusion is that, they are indeed different in British English and warrant the use of different symbols, but they are much closer in American English and are considered only as variants.

Now I know I knew nothing about American English.

Re: How's and House - are they pronounced differently?

Kooyeen — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 17:11:45 GMT

Hi, those two vowels are the same to me. The only difference between "how's" and "house" is the final consonant. I think this is true for both General American and the kind of British English that is usually learned. I don't know if there are people who make a distinction or situations where a subtle difference might be noticed... There probably are. You know, there are so many accents. But I've never noticed something similar to this so far.

Unreleased final consonants

Kooyeen — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 19:46:37 GMT

Hi,
I read Nona's new post earlier, but... where is it now? I can't see it anymore. It was a post with a link to a website where you could listen to IPA sounds (for British English).
Well, I heard a lot of words pronounced with a clear consonant sound at the end. I thought of posting this:

What are the consonant that are unreleased at the end of a word? (In American English, but Nona's and the other brits' opinions are welcome too of course, lol).

If you say Bob as Bo-buh, bod as bo-duh, bop as bo-puh, and bot as bo-tuh, you will be doing a stereotypical Italian accent. What I notice is that in American English all the final consonants are unreleased, apart form k, which is not aspirated though. The T is unreleased and often with a glottal stop. For M, N, P, ect., not releasing them means not opening the mouth again at the end.
Sometimes final consonants are released, but only very very little, so... Having said that, there's not much difference between:
Bot / Bop
Bod / Bob
The fist pair can be distinguished from the second by the vowel length (longer vowel and on two levels of intonation if the syllable ends with a voiced consonant). But there's not much difference between the words in each pair, is there?

Opinions? Thannk you in advance

Re: Question about how to pronounce Europe

Orpheus — Tue, 17 Jul 2007 05:10:01 GMT

I'd say that there is a slight difference between the US and UK pronunciation of the word. The first syllable of Europe in British English is generally pronounced with the diphthong // while in American English it is simply with the vowel //. The diphthong // is a characteristic of British English and is not found in American English; American English in corresponding places would have the simple vowel // followed by /r/.
The first consonant sound /j/ on the other hand is pronounced exactly the same in both American and British English. It is the same /j/ as in 'you'.