User talk:JHJ

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English English etc
Nice work. I'd been considering having a go at tidying up some of those descriptions, but didn't trust my linguistics enough to mess with the IPA notation. RayGirvan 13:07, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC)

RP page
I don't think I know enough about RP, especially not its usage, to fix it up. It would probably be better to have a British person do it who has some intuitions about it. --Angr/undefined 20:35, 29 July 2005 (UTC)
 * The Phonology section looks good; I made a few minor corrections. The Speaking with RP section looks pretty bad; most things either need to be deleted or to be rewritten and put in the Phonology section. Saying it "gives great importance to vowel sounds" and "great attention is paid to articulating consonants clearly" is of course nonsense from a descriptive point of view. All accents of all languages give equal importance to vowel and consonant sounds: you have to pronounced them clearly enough that your listener can understand you. (Nevertheless the fact that there is no Flapping could be mentioned in the Phonology, since Flapping is sometimes present in Cockney.) The pronunciation of the GOAT vowel has been covered in the Phonology section; the short-vowel pronunciation of "room" is neither confined to nor consistently present in RP. The merger of sure and shore can also be discussed in the Phonology section (making it clear that it's two vowels being merged and not just two specific words that are homophonous). The formerly/formally and iron/ion thing can be gotten rid of; it's obvious once we know that RP is non-rhotic. The stalk thing is also irrelevant; probably all English accents have the THOUGHT vowel in words spelled -alk. The broad A, horse-hoarse merger, and whine-wine merger are already mentioned in phonology. And AFAIK calm is never pronounced rather than . I don't know what Waiting for Godot has to say about the matter, but since the play was written in French, it's probably irrelevant. --Angr/undefined 10:48, 30 July 2005 (UTC)

You're right, my edit was gibberish. I've removed it! Myopic Bookworm 09:45, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

gone
(I replied also on my own talk page.)


 * Indeed, 'gone' doesn't rhyme with either 'don' or 'dawn', or any other word in English. I'd describe the vowel as being [ɔː] to don's [ɔ] and dawn's [oː]. This distinctiveness has been confirmed annecdotally (without prompting) by people in both Melbourne and Adelaide, but I've never seen anything written about the sound in any published work, in spite of much looking. [i know now this means it probably shouldn't be included as WP:NOR.] I know nothing about it's origins; it might be vaguely related to the bad-lad split, though. (Length is quite distinctive in Australian vowels, with pairs /ɪ/–[ɪː]=/ɪə/, /e/–/eː/, /æ/–/æː/, /ɐ/–/ɐː/, /ʊ/–[ʊː]=/ʉː+l, ʊə+r/.) — Felix the Cassowary 01:39, 19 August 2005 (UTC)


 * (I replied again on my own talk page.) — Felix the Cassowary 00:53, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

Coil-curl merger
"Nonexistant" is indeed an unfortunate term. "Moribund" or "obsolescent", perhaps. According to Wells (Accents of English, vol. 3, pp. 508 ff.) the [3I] diphthong of NURSE was used also in certain CHOICE words, so that earl and oil were homophones as [3Il]. But it only happened before a consonant; stir and boy never rhymed. Pronunciations like [t3`l@t] for toilet are due to hypercorrection. He goes on to say that the [3I] pronunciation used to be unstigmatized: well over half of Labov's informants born before 1910 used it, and it can be observed regularly in the speech of such sophisticated New Yorkers as Henry Miller and Groucho Marx. But it rather suddenly became quite stigmatized: it's sharply recessive among speakers born between 1925 and 1945, and those born after 1950 regularly use [3`] for NURSE even if their speech is otherwise nonrhotic. --Angr/undefined 04:36, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

Gaelg agus Gàidhlig
Trying to explain Manx orthography is like trying to explain English orthography. Why don't tough, cough, plough and dough rhyme? Why don't sew and few? Why is spelled u in busy and o in women when most of the time it's spelled i? Manx orthography is just as bad. The page you pointed to looks really good, though. I'm no expert in Scottish Gaelic phonetics, but it looks very professional. --Angr/undefined 17:37, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

Phonemic differentiation
I'll try to clean up History of the English language as soon as I get a chance. The line/loin merger is actually rather interesting, more so than what it says there now. I'll fix that up soon too. --Angr/undefined 17:20, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

BTW, the bad-lad split is definitely in some people's RP. Wells says so, and a native RP speaker who's a linguist has confirmed it for her speech to me too. --Angr/undefined 17:22, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

Foosher
My experience with this editor (or rather with an anon who from his behavior I strongly suspect of being the same person) is that you can't expect him to acknowledge his sources. It's a PITA, but probably the best thing is to do the work yourself, adding the reference and putting quotation marks around direct quotes from Trudgill, rewriting where necessary, etc. This is what I had to do when the anon who is probably the same guy was lifting text wholesale from William Labov. --Angr (t·c) 11:01, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

Thanks...
... for the link. Terra Green 20:38, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

pronunciations to be deleted
Hi JHJ,

Just a heads up: Articles for deletion/Pronunciation respelling key.

—kwami 21:07, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

"father" and "bother"
Might you be able to answer the question I asked about the syllable divisions on "father" and "bother" I asked on this page Talk:Phonological history of English consonants. Since you, like me, are from Northern England, I was wondering if the words have the same or a different syllable division for you? I have /fA.Dr\=/ and /bQ.Dr\=/ for them both with the "th" belonging to the second syllable, but dictionaries claim that "father" is /fA.Dr\=/ with the "th" belonging to the second syllable while "bother" is /bQD.r\=/ with the "th" belonging to the first syllable. Thus, I have the same syllable division for both of the words. Klooge 04:22, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

Pronunciation of "aunt"
You were right about the pronunciation of "aunt". I'm from Northern England and "aunt" definitely has the "cat" vowel, not the "palm" vowel for me. Klooge 22:22, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

Leicestoh
Leicestoh is unsatisfactory I agree. I wanted to avoid IPA, while providing links to the vowels, but as you say it's ambiguous as it stands.

I cannot find a source, though I've not looked hard for one, I don't really know where to so you may have to remove it as original reseach (perhaps with much of the rest of the article, it seems to nearly all lack sources). This is a shame as I think this one of the most characteristic vowels of the Leicester accent, especially when applied to words like ooh-yer, bleeder and fucker. Surprise and other strong feelings bring back stifled or altered accents and so this vowel change is most often found in these expressions of such feelings.--Mongreilf 15:07, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

Re: accents
I've heard the thing about the South-East Midlands many times. http://www.bbc.co.uk/northyorkshire/voices2005/glossary/barrie_rhodes.shtml "Standard English is nothing more or less than a particular dialect from the South East Midlands". The three counties that I specifically identified were based on B.B.C. Voices: the book "Talking for Britain", Simon Elmes, p.114 I can't say that I've ever met anyone from Kettering. As it is in north Northamptonshire, it seems peripheral to the Standard English area that was described in the book, and probably not too big a problem. Epa101 17:51, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Epa101"

P.S. I am a bit of a dialect enthusiast, and admit that I don't always remember where I read stuff. My main points of reference are http://www.collectbritain.com/collections/dialects , the Voices survey and the Yorkshire Dictionary.

Thanks for the interest in the page anyway. Ed

Sussex
http://www.bbc.co.uk/voices/recordings/individual/southerncounties-lewes-lewis-bob.shtml There was this as well. Notice in the commentary about "laughing". It was a bit strange though, as he does not say "laughing" anywhere in the transcript. I checked for the old recordings on S.E.D., and thought that they were better evidence, but I must be wrong. I'm glad that you picked up on it.

Thanks, Ed Epa101 10:30, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

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