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

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: How do Americans pronounce this word?

Kooyeen — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 22:58:44 GMT

Hi,
it's pronounced in a variety of ways:

Twenty (like in British English)
Twendy (this d would be like the tapped t in "atom" for example)
Tweny (no t)
Twuny (no t and with a schwa vowel)
etc.

Can you read IPA? I say /twÉni/, no t and with a schwa vowel, like the second audio clip on MW, but without the T. Look it up here: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/twenty

Re: Changing from American to British accent.

Lincoln Punch — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 17:39:35 GMT

I tried, but failed.

It's really difficult even though English is not my first language.

I love how British English sounds, but I feel more comfortable and confident when I speak in American English.

Besides, some vowels, like British 'short o' sound is really hard for me to pronounce.

It's probably because I learned American English first.

Re: pronunciation

Huevos — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 09:33:47 GMT

Yes, they are correct in British English. US stress doesn't always follow British stress, but I would have thought so here. By the way the "standard" way to show stress is an acute accent over the vowel: PÃ³rtugal, AmÃ©rica, GÃ©rmany, etcÃ©tera.

Re: fair-haired

Kooyeen — Wed, 21 May 2008 20:03:07 GMT

Pter
Do you know which accent is chosen by MW as the reference in the pronunciation keys. Is it General American?

No idea. The audio files comes from several different speakers, but I think I've always heard "accentless" pronunciations from MW. So I guess it might me General American, generally speaking.

Pter
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.)

Well, you say it's non-ambiguous because you know that a certain T has to be tapped, a certain P must not be aspirated, a certain L should be dark, and so on. You know that certain combinations are not common or not possible at all in English, and you avoid them. Then what's wrong in pronouncing MW's combination /er/ the way it should be, as you do with all other combinations? The only difference is that the way it should be depends on your accent, and there is more than one acceptable way to produce that combination.

Pter
As a result, using / er / in American English to represent the counterpart of the British English / e / is non-ambiguous after all!

Yep, exactly, but it wouldn't have been ambiguous anyway... unless you expected dictionaries to always give a "perfect" transcription, corresponding to a specific accent. Since there is often more than one neutral accent and way of pronouncing words, dictionaries give more general transcriptions that can usually be adapted to your accent.

Pter
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.

No problem... but remember I'm not an expert, lol. it's just that I once had your exact same problems with transcriptions. I had no idea how many different accents and acceptable ways of speaking there were. There are really a lot, and finding out general rules that apply to every native speaker is basically impossible.

Pter
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!

Heh, I know in the UK there are lots of interesting accents. Some people drop this, skip that, shift vowels here, put glottal stops there... Different accent in different places, different social groups, different age groups... It's so in the US too, and in other countries too, I guess. That's why the more I learn, the more I realize I have a lot to learn. But English is an interesting language, isn't it?

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

Kooyeen — Sun, 18 May 2008 20:19:00 GMT

Ah, I didn't know you used British English... Since you mentioned Merriam-Webster, I thought you wanted to use American English.

Pter
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.

No, I don't think so, and it's what I've tried to explain so far. Just because a certain symbol is used, doesn't mean it has to sound exactly the same in every case or every dialect. Generally speaking, if there's an intervocalic T in an unstressed syllable, you turn it into a tapped T in American English, but dictionaries use the same symbol anyway, T. So I don't see what's wrong with doing the same thing with vowels, for example. An /e/ before an /r/ changes a little, or a lot, or not at all, depending on the speaker. There are a lot of similar considerations. Another one I can think of is the COT-CAUGHT merger: Merriam-Webster makes a distinction between those two vowels, but I don't, and neither do a lot of native speakers... so whenever I see the symbol they use for the vowel in CAUGHT, I replace it with the vowel in COT. As you see, it doesn't really matter what symbols they use, because I also take account of the features of the variety I want to use as the default one. And an /e/ before an /r/ is something you can consider as a variable feature.

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: 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: fair-haired

Pter — Fri, 16 May 2008 15:33:51 GMT

Thanks, GG. Now this is absolutely confusing to me. I always had problem with reading the pronunciation keys for American English. British pronunciations have long been standardized on IPA. Why can't American English dictionaries use IPA??? The symbols in Merriam-Webster is different from that of American Heritage. And who knows how many different sets of symbols are used by different American English dictionaries? The worst thing is that my Cambridge Pronouncing Dictionary uses a mix of IPA with a bit of these non-standard American symbols for showing American pronunciations!

I think the pronunciation keys in Merriam-Webster are just plain WRONG! It says

\ \ as a in abut
\ \ as u in abut
\ \ as e in kitten
\ r \ as ur/er in further

\ e \ as e in bet
\ \ as ea in easy
\ \ as y in easy

(Barbara, where in the pronunciation symbols page says "er" is the same sound as "air"? There is no entry for \ er \ on that page!!!)

I mean this page --> http://www.merriam-webster.com/pronsymbols.html

Am I mis-reading the symbols? Or Americans really say the vowel in bet exactly the same as that in hair??? They are obviously different in the voice recordings in Merriam-Webster.

In British English, they are two different vowels.

? ? ? ? ? It is driving me nuts!