Re: The "u" and "v" in older written English is confvsing

"John Atkinson" <johnacko@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:ZSOZj.4078$IK1.2895@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

[V"]? Is that how you/they pronounce the SUN vowel? 'V" ' is, IIRC, Kirshenbaum for backwards epsilon, so that its long version [V":] is the vowel in nurse and girl, which, for me (and also in typical RP, AIUI) is quite a long way from SUN, and close to [@:].

Quite a lot of people probably think the IPA does not understand IPA vowel symbols. The definitions are:

ɜ U+025C, X-SAMPA <3>, Kirshenbaum <V">
ɞ U+025E, X-SAMPA <3\>?, Kirshenbaum <O">
(Wells's X-SAMPA proposal actually give <3\> for ʚ U+029A, but is clearly a typo.)
ɘ U+0258, X-SAMPA <@\>, Kirshenbaum <@<umd>>
ɵ U+0275, X-SAMPA <8> is troublesome. In his X-SAMPA proposal, Wells describe the vowel as 'mid-central', which I suppose may just refer to its use for Swedish, but makes it Kirshenbaum <@.> - though the Wiki article claims that <@.> represents a 'close-mid' vowel! However, the IPA chart at http://www.arts.gla.ac.uk/IPa/vowels.html makes ɵ U+0275 upper-mid, which would be Kirshenbaum <o">.

(If the symbols don't render, consult http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U0250.pdf .)

Now, the RP vowel of SUN is or was [ɐ] (What's the Kirshenbaum symbol for this?), though educated Yorkshire is reportedly (J.D. O'Connor) actually [ə] (K. [@]). I therefore think that Kirshenbaum [V"] is a reasonable approximation to both my pronunciation and to the RP pronunciation.

Conversely, the RP pronunciation of <nurse> etc., though traditionally written using the IPA symbols [ɜː], should be written in IPA as [ɘː] (Kirshenbaum [@<umd>:]), though J.D. O'Connor depicts it as [əː] (K. [@:]) and reports the former as Cockney.

Anyway, to the point. Do these folk have [A.] for _all_ SUN words spelled with <o> (done, come, love, mother, stomach, monk, tongue, onion, money, front)? What about words spelled <ou> (touch, enough, young, double, southern, country) and <oo> (blood, flood)?

I've not noticed [A.] in any of these. I was thinking of words in <con-> and <com->, several of which show fluctuation between [A.] and [V"].

Or is it restricted to words starting with /w/. If so, does it occur in <worry> and <wonder> too, or just <won> and <one>?

Variation occurs in all these words, but I've only heard [wA.mb&t] for <wombat>.

I was listening out for pronunciations of these words, and I found on Disney channel that /wA.n/ was much commoner than /wV"n/ for 'one'. As for 'won', listen to the chant of 'We won the cup' at http://www.fanchants.com/football-songs/liverpool-chants/we-won-the-cup/ . What I hear is /wi: wA.n D@ kV"p/.

Possibility (1): it occurs in all these <o> words and is either [Speculation (a)] a comparatively recent spelling pronunciation by people who previously had [U]; or [Speculation (b)] a retention from the time before the rest of us southerners changed from [A.] to [V] in these words -- i.e., around or a bit after the time the standard spelling was established several centuries ago.

We didn't change [A.] to [V"]. The change shows every sign of being [U] > [V] > [V"].

Possibility (2): It occurs just in <wo>=RP/wV/ words (all four of them), and [Speculation (c)] is an extension of the change /w&/ > /wA./ (what, was, Wally, ...) in the standard language to /wV/ > /wA./ as well, which, for non-obvious reasons, neveer happened with the rest of us.

Or a parallel development? Did we have /w&r/ > /wA:/ > /wO:/ or /w&r/ > /wA.r/ > /wA./? The pronunciation of <qualm> as /kwA:m/ suggests the latter, but there's also a pronunciation /kwO:m/, and <water> is /wO:t@/. Of course, we could just be dealing with spelling pronunciations in the case of <qualm>.

While /wV"/ > /wA./ seems plausible, I note that words like <worth> are *not* pronounced */wO:T/.

Richard.

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