Re: This week on Dancing with the Stars Re: The Business Memoir - the ``whom'' question


Ruud Harmsen wrote:
26 Oct 2006 06:11:24 -0700: "Peter T. Daniels"
<grammatim@xxxxxxxxxxx>: in sci.lang:

Maybe that's its definiens, but for me the more salient feature is its
degree of frontness. [&] is the "marry" vowel, not the "Mary" vowel --
most English-speakers don't make that distinction. "Mary" is saliently
higher than "marry" (and "merry" is higher still, with Helen Mirren and
Dennis [or Timothy] Leary occupying the highest rungs of front vowels).
(Mirror has [I] not [i].)

OK. But if [&] to you is front and fully open/low, how do you
distinguish between the RP /southern British marry vowel (possible
also used by many Americans) and that of many Irishmen, Scotsmen and
North-Englishmen (and wo-men too, of course)? That one is fully open
and front, but notably different than the southern English [&].

(Some from Nothern Ireland make it open and central, or even slightly
back, cf. how the Northern Irish character (Adam Williams, played by
James Nesbitt) said <karen>: almost [kAr@n].

I certainly wouldn't object if you provided me with an
all-expenses-paid vacation (though not in winter) in the northern
British isles so that I can learn what vowel qualities you're referring
to.

I repeat yet again that I don't know how to phonetically notate the
Mary vowel.

.

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