Re: Long vs. short vowels in English

From: Bart Mathias (bartmathias_at_verizon.net)
Date: 07/21/04 

Date: Wed, 21 Jul 2004 01:22:58 GMT

Mxsmanic wrote:
> John Atkinson writes:
>
>
>>None of my references mention this as a possible realisation of this vowel
>>in any variety of North American English. Are you sure you're not Scots?
>
>
> I'm not. Are phonologists certain that this is really a diphthong? The
> second vowel must be extraordinarily faint.

Doesn't take a phonologist! Ask any teacher of foreign languages to
Americans. Getting rid of that diphthong in the beginner's
pronunciation of Spanish or Japanese or etc. is a major problem.

Bart Mathias

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Nasalised vowels and stops
    ... of the diphthong, not the first, although the stress, they say, is on ... nasalisation of the preceding vowel in final position, ... features of the nasals, for me, is that they seem to be much more nasal ...
    (sci.lang)
  • Re: Your first "linguistic" memory
    ... >>Neeraj Mathur wrote: ... >>always affect the pronunciation but usually because the vowel quality ... > nucleus or the second half of a diphthong in the older form of the language, ...
    (sci.lang)
  • Re: La Garde muert, elle ne se rend pas!
    ... "La Garde muert, ... The third word is correctly meurt, ... diphthong vowel has no near equivalent in English. ...
    (alt.usage.english)
  • Re: why cant the BBC
    ... phonologists think it's length that's signifcant and Am phonologists ... But it may depend on the vowel: ... For bin/bean and pull/pool, length, offglide and height all differ, but length seems most significant. ...
    (sci.lang)
  • Re: Your first "linguistic" memory
    ... >> Neeraj Mathur ... the poverty of vowels in the English alphabet masks. ... >always affect the pronunciation but usually because the vowel quality ... nucleus or the second half of a diphthong in the older form of the language, ...
    (sci.lang)