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

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: 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 — Fri, 16 May 2008 17:13:03 GMT

In British English, what you said are two different vowels and are in fact denoted differently in IPA. The extended ones are diphthongs.

bet / bet /

bear / ber /

bee / bi: /

beer / bir /

(The non-rhotic "r" cannot be shown accurately.)

I wonder my understanding of IPA for British English may be totally inapplicable to American English.

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

Anonymous — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 18:31:00 GMT

Hi Kooyeen,

The vowels you describe are not the same, neither in General American nor British English RP. Because of pre-fortis clipping, the diphthong in "how's" is almost twice as long as that in "house".

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'.

Re: Cote D'livore

Conchita57 — Mon, 19 Mar 2007 00:08:17 GMT

Marvin A. wrote:
>> Now, said with a Southern French accent, it becomes [cot] <<
>> The sound I meant is [o:] as in RP or Standard British English. <<

Now you're really confusing me. Are you using IPA, or similar system for transcription? The letter "c" in the IPA, X-SAMPA, and Kirshenbaum transcription systems is a voiceless palatal plosive, that is only found in Hungarian. The letter "o" in IPA is the "o" sound in the word "coat" in North Central dialects of NAE--most dialects of England English use a diphthong for the "o" sound. The vowel that is used to transcribe the "au" in "caught" in RP is not /o:/, but is /ÉË/, the long open-mid back rounded vowel.

[cot] (I'm assuming /kot/), would be how someone from Minnesota pronounces the word "coat". It is not how an RP speaker pronounces the word "cot".

The [ ] and / / marks represent IPA or X-SAMPA transcription.

I would pronounce "cote d'ivoire" as /kot divwA/.

Except for the , which should indeed be a , Iâm using the phonetic symbols Iâve used all my life, as I learnt them 35 years ago from the Oxford Progressive English Course, by A. S. Hornby (EFL/ESL coursebooks have come a long way since then!). If you replace my âoâ in and [o:] with [ ] and [ÉË], it should be less confusing for you.

The French âoâ in âCÃ´teâ isnât a diphthong â it rhymes with âcaughtâ in RP. The ProvenÃ§als, however, say it as âcotâ in RP.

Re: Cote D'livore

Marvin A. — Sun, 18 Mar 2007 22:18:56 GMT

>> Now, said with a Southern French accent, it becomes [cot] <<
>> The sound I meant is [o:] as in RP or Standard British English. <<

Now you're really confusing me. Are you using IPA, or similar system for transcription? The letter "c" in the IPA, X-SAMPA, and Kirshenbaum transcription systems is a voiceless palatal plosive, that is only found in Hungarian. The letter "o" in IPA is the "o" sound in the word "coat" in North Central dialects of NAE--most dialects of England English use a diphthong for the "o" sound. The vowel that is used to transcribe the "au" in "caught" in RP is not /o:/, but is /ÉË/, the long open-mid back rounded vowel.

[cot] (I'm assuming /kot/), would be how someone from Minnesota pronounces the word "coat". It is not how an RP speaker pronounces the word "cot".

The [ ] and / / marks represent IPA or X-SAMPA transcription.

I would pronounce "cote d'ivoire" as /kot divwA/.

Re: American Eng. features in the UK

Kooyeen — Fri, 19 Jan 2007 22:46:28 GMT

Anonymous wrote:

The American pronunciation of âoâ in your next example wouldnât be found in any regional accent of British English that I can call to mind immediately, though there is considerable variation in the pronunciation of this sound â for example, in Scotland, Liverpool and the West Country. Similarly, there are variations in the pronunciation of the âtalk, walk, callâ vowel and the âno, so, lowâ diphthong from region to region â but none that I can think of that are close enough to the American pronunciation to be considered the same.

The tap/flap is quite a distinctive feature of American English. Itâs not in the standard British English inventory, but you might hear it in some Irish accents.

I've heard British singers who tap their t's, pronounce the o's in "not, god, etc." like the "a" in "car", ect. Is that because they want to imitate an American Accent, then? Robbie Williams sings that way, he's British, so what kind of British accent does he have?