Search results for 'tag:Pronunciation tag:Diphthongs' matching tags 'Pronunciation' and 'Diphthongs'

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: pronunciation for Finance

Kooyeen — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 18:34:04 GMT

Wow, you even studied linguistics...
Well, /Éª/ is the vowel in TIP, and /aÉª/ is the diphthong in TYPE. The symbol /i/ technically stands for a higher vowel, as in TEA, for example. That's IPA.
SAMPA is another transcription method where only ASCII characters are used (so you can find them on your keyboard). This is SAMPA for English:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAMPA_chart_for_English
Using SAMPA you write the schwa as @, and you don't need "strange" symbols that are not on your keyboard. Marvin used SAMPA.

PS: I prefer IPA. I never learned SAMPA decently

Linking two consonants/diphthongs ???

Todinhkhoi — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 04:03:43 GMT

Dear all

I am having some pronunciation problems.

1. When saying some words like "Image Shack", do we make any linking between the /dz/ (last diphthong of "Image") and /sh/ (first diphthong of "Shack"), or do we just pronounce the two words "Image" and "Shack" separately? Likewise, do we make any linking between /sh/ of "fish" and /s/ of "sauce" in "fish-sauce"? And if we need to make such a linking, how to make it correctly?

2. Do you know of any website that has more materials on such issues?

Thank you in advance.

Re: Grammars of Songs

Kooyeen — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 19:48:19 GMT

Hi again,
sorry, I meant to say that you should avoid considering songs as a major means of learning English.

You don't learn good pronunciation by listening to songs. Often words are mispronounced (because they are sung). So you'll often hear "crazy" pronounced "cray-zeh", reduced diphthongs so "my" will sound as mah, etc. When I started to learn English the only stuff I listened to were songs. That's why I used to sound southern, LOL (I used to pronounce every final y as eh... I was hap-peh, lol).

You won't learn good grammar either.

But you could learn some new words.

If you want to sing a song because you like it, just sing it. And mispronounce the words the same way you hear them, if you want to sound like the singer. That's ok, and it's fun, as long as that's not the only way you study and practice English. That's what I wanted to say.

Re: How about my accent?

Kooyeen — Sat, 10 Nov 2007 15:13:46 GMT

Hi,
you sound like you want to imitate George Dubya, LOL
Seriously, I'm going to comment on the first part, just on some features though:

Belly wrote:
Here is the script:

The Beatles were an English group of musicians from Liverpool whose members were John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr. They are one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed bands in the history of popular music.[2]

Here are the words I picked, because of their particular pronunciation features.

Beatles: you tap the T. Looks like you want to use an American accent.
English: your final sh sounds like s.
group: I noticed the vowel you used here.
musicians: mispronounced
whose: devoiced final s. You used s instead of z.
Starr: you don't always do American R's correctly.
most: I noticed the vowel. you didn't use a diphthong here.
commercially: wrong stress.
critically: you tapped the T in Beatles, but you don't tap the T here.

Those are just some of the words where I noticed something "unusual". Let's see what the others have to say now.

Re: First name pronunciation

Buddhaheart — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 23:44:21 GMT

LPD offers 3 pronunciations: The 1^st one (Main BrE) is with the first âoâ as a diphthong as in the word âshowâ(/bÂ/), the âyâ as a semivowel as in âcityâ (/i/), the second âoâ as a schwa; the alternative BrE is to pronounce the âoâ as in âhotâ /Z/; theAmE proninciation is closer to the Main BrE except with the âyâ as a consonant as in âyellowâ (/j/). So the BrE pronunciation has 3 syllables but only 2 in AmE.

The â97 EPD only gives 2 variant AmE pronunciations: The first ââoââ either as the one in the LPD or as an /Y+/ typically as in the word âarmâ. The âyâ is as a consonant only, i.e. not treated as a semivowel. In this case both BrE and AmE are in agreement that this is a 2-syllable name.

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: which pronunciation for clarity is more popular?

Kooyeen — Sun, 15 Apr 2007 22:23:59 GMT

Ok, this thread is becoming a mess, it was my fault, I'm so sorry...
Well, let's try to distinguish those sounds, with the help of some audio files:

IPA / Ã¦ /
XSAMPA / { /
Example: cat /kÃ¦t/ - http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/cat

IPA / É /
XSAMPA / E /
Example: bet /bÉt/ - http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/bet

IPA / e /
XSAMPA / e /
Example: may /mei/ (starting sound in the diphthong) - http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/may

Additional examples. Notice the difference between Ã¦, É , e.
PLAY - I always say /plei/, but here you can hear /plÉi/ ---> http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/play
WEAR - I always say /wer/, like here ---> http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/wear
BEAR - I always say /ber/, but here you can hear /bÉr/ ----> http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/bear

Re: How would you pronounce these foreign names?

Colombo — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 10:40:22 GMT

I suppose demicjusz is interested in how those words are pronounced by people who speak English, so I don't think my opinion here would be useful, since my spoken English doesn't contain many sounds apart from those that belong also to Spanish (so you can imagine my accent). With my nil knowledge of phonetic transcription, if I wanted to tell you how I'd pronounce the words in demicjusz's list (with my Spanish accent, remember), all I'd have to do is copy the list again, perhaps with a couple of changes here and there. Besides, an English-speaking person would not pronounce my transcription as I'd do, so I'm afraid it's no use my writing it. However, I'd like to make a comment about "Fortaleza", which is a Spanish word.

Demicjusz wrote:
I'm not surprised about 'lei' in 3 (I see a parallel with 'Venezuela'),

Mister Micawber wrote:
3. Fortaleza / four t? 'lei z? /

When I've read Mister Micawber's transcription I've immediately thought of an American speaking Spanish with a very heavy accent (by the way, I cannot see the parallel with "Venezuela" ... Perhaps it's because I don't know how that word's pronounced in English). Anyway, I'm going to try to explain how I say "Fortaleza". The fact that -as I've already said- I speak English with Spanish sounds won't help, but I'll do my best.

To begin with, I think the idea of "four" for the first syllable is good. In case you're thinking of the British pronunciation of "four", the "r" does sound in "fortaleza", with what I think is a stronger sound than that of your "four" (since the tongue rolls when saying it). As for the next syllable, the transcription "t?" seems to have an "a" with an undefined unclear sound. However, that "a" should be clearly uttered (it seems to me that Nona has managed something closer to it). Forced to give an equivalence, I'd say it's the sound in "park" (but with all kind of reservations). The syllable Demicjusz finds logical, 'lei, wouldn't be pronounced like that, since Spanish is read as it's written, and so, if you see a vowel "e" you pronounce a vowel "e" (probably like in "met", not a long "ee" like Nona's), and not a diphthong. As to the last syllable, the wovel should be the same as in the second, while the "z" should be as the "th" sound in "think". Well, at least that's how I'd say it. That sound isn't used by all Spanish-speaking people. In fact, I think that most of them would use one of those /s/, /z/ or whatever you call it (I cannot really tell the difference, it's what I would simply describe as an "s", although I think theirs is softer, since all Latin Americans keep on telling us how strong our "s" is). In most of Spain we use that "th" sound, but in the south of Spain and in the rest of Spanish-speaking countries they use what I call the "s" sound (even though they're taught to pronounce the "z" with the "th" sound at school, I've been told).

I'm a little ashamed of this clumsy explanation, but I'm afraid I can do no better. I cannot give clear examples in English because I tend to say everything with the only five vowels I know, so I use the same sound in "can", "but" and "park", or in "sheet" and "***", or in "look" y "pool"... Have I made your hair curl? Sorry! I know they're not the same sounds, although that doesn't mean I can use them!

Demicjusz wrote:
so I added '-cjusz', which, at least in Polish, immediately shows masculinity;

To me, it only shows a very high degree of Polishness

Re: character, k-air-acter

Marvin A. — Thu, 15 Mar 2007 04:19:33 GMT

>> extra example: damn = /dÉÉm/ or /deÉm/ <<

Actually, it would be /dÃ¦m/. However, the pronunciation of [dÉÉm] is very common--it is /Ã¦/ tensing before nasals. Some people around here pronounce it like that, others use the more conservative pronounciation of [dÃ¦m].

>> air <<

That would be [ Er\] for me.

>> ay = /leÉª/ <<

Yeah, that's right. However, some people have monophthongs for /eÉª/ thus: [ e ] .

>> air, lay and bed the same way? <<
No.

>> By the way, I think you wanted to say /Î¸ÉÅks/ and not /Î¸eÅks/ <<

No, I think I say it as [Î¸eÅks], or even [Î¸eÉªÅks] for those that do have a diphthong for /eÉª/.