Re: some more Irish vowels

Peter T. Daniels wrote:
Ruud Harmsen wrote:
15 Dec 2006 06:37:05 -0800: "Peter T. Daniels"
<grammatim@xxxxxxxxxxx>: in sci.lang:

merry is highest
marry is lowest

Quite agree. A little higher than [E], and a little lower, that is,
[æ] (in the IPA sense, not "usage" sense).

No, Ruud. merry is [E]

marry is [&] ([ae])

Mary is intermediate --

So it must be roughly [E].

No, Ruud. [E] is uncontroversially the vowel of merry.

More precisely, [E] is uncontroversially accepted as the transcription
of the vowel in Anglos' merry. A spread vowel between English [E] and
IPA [&] might well be closer to IPA [E] than is English [E], so your
"Mary" might have a vowel closer to IPA [E] than does your "merry". [E]
is also a transcription of the vowel Germans often write as a<umlaut>
and the transcription of the vowel French write as e<grave>.

but has obligatory spreading

That might explain a perception of similarity to [e] despite being
closer to [E] in openness. In openness and retractedness, English [E]
seems something like 2 O'clock of IPA [E] and 5 O'clock of IPA [e].

Spreading of what? Lips? So are the other two rounded?

No, Ruud. If you'd ever had phonetics training, you'd know that
"spread" and "rounded" are two lip positions you can move to from
"neutral."

.... but if someone spreads IPA [3] more than it is spread in your
"bird", would you insist that it's no longer [3] but is nearly a
cardinal point more closed?

.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: some more Irish vowels
    ... No, Ruud. ... is uncontroversially the vowel of merry. ... You seem to be suggesting that IPA symbols have absolute values. ...
    (sci.lang)
  • Re: some more Irish vowels
    ... SBrit varieties certainly have, with no offglide ... his local dialect is, so of course I've expressed no opinion about it anywhere in this thread, as you may have noticed. ... You're saying that, unlike most SBrit realizations, your Mary has a pure vowel with no offglide? ... Of course, in SBrit, whether or not Mary has an off-glide, the main feature distinguishing it from merry is that the Mary vowel is long, while the merry vowel is short -- so the longer Mary is extended, the _less_ the likelyhood of confusion! ...
    (sci.lang)
  • Re: watch your language!
    ... Merry is distinctive but I'm having trouble thinking of an audio ... distinction between Mary and marry. ... I can hear the distinctions others make between "merry" (vowel ... MIMIM means "Mary is merry is marry". ...
    (rec.arts.sf.written)
  • Re: some more Irish vowels
    ... My South Indian English is a different register if not a different ... while the merry vowel is short -- so the longer Mary is extended, ... It is not without reason that British phoneticians focus on vowel ...
    (sci.lang)
  • Re: some more Irish vowels
    ... three-way Mary-merry-marry distinction at ... noticing was a slightly more central vowel in 'merry'. ... York accent (the Accent Formerly Known As Postwar Prestige ...
    (sci.lang)