vowel pronunciations
>>My Longman DCE gives /ɔ:/ for British English and /ɒ:/ for American English in words like "caught".
Why do people write confusing things like "/kɔt/ (/ɔ/ is realized as [ɒ])" and not simply "/kɒt/" or "[kɒt]"? It's not like [ɒ] is an allophone of /ɔ/ in American English... Or is it?<<
Such is really just due to rather fixed, old-fashioned phonemic transcription conventions that are often in use. One only finds [ɔ:] for such in very conservative General American within NAE, as practically all other NAE dialects have dialects lower than that for such. I myself for one tend to perceive [ɔ(:)] as my own phoneme /o/ rather than as /ɒ/.
<<Why do people write confusing things like "/kɔt/ (/ɔ/ is realized as [ɒ])" and not simply "/kɒt/" or "[kɒt]"?>>
I agree; I think /ɒ:/ should be used for American English. There seems to be a fundamental difference between RP and GA in that GA uses distinctly different vowel qualities in “caught” and “core”, whereas RP does not. For example, in American English you can have two distinct pronunciations of the name “Laura”: “lore-a” and “law-ra” (as I would transcribe them, [ˈlɔɚə] and [ˈlɒ:ɹə]). Such a distinction would be impossible in RP: both of those faux-netic renderings would be pronounced identically. (Likewise, AmEng can meaningfully contrast the diphthong [ɔɪ] with sequences of […ɒ:j…], as in the two possible pronunciations of “lawyer” – “loy-er” and “law-yer” -, but these would sound so nearly identical in BrEng that a distinction wouldn’t be tenable.) Comparing this with [ɑ] – the faux-netic renderings “lar-a” and “lah-ra” would be pronounced identically in AmEng – I think we can see that for most AmEng speakers, the vowel in “caught” has become fundamentally dissociated from the vowel in “core”. They don’t intuitively consider them to be the same phoneme. (When I first saw IPA transcriptions of AmEng, I found it confusing that they seemed to be suggesting that “caught” and “core” used the same phoneme.) You can hear this often when Americans try to do a fake British accent: they’ll correctly derhoticize the “core” vowel to [ɔ:], but being unaware of BrEng phonemics, they’ll continue to use [ɒ:] in words like “caught”. It’s probably the commonest and most glaring error that I’ve noticed when Americans try to do a fake British accent.
I would say that such come to the point that in many NAE dialects (mine own included), such merged vowels in prerhotic positions have shifted from being paired with their tense counterparts rather than their lax counterparts. For instance, here the vowel in "low" [ˈʟ̞oː] is much closer to that in "Laura" [ˈʟ̞ɔ̝ːʁəː] than that in "Law-ra" [ˈʟ̞ɒːʁəː] (hypothetically). Furthermore, there are certain special cases where due to elision a consonant separating /ɒ/ from a following /r/ is elided resulting in /ɒ/ actually coming into contact with said /r/ such that it actually contrasts with [ɔ̝] in such positions. A good example of such here is the frequent pronunciation of "already" as [ɒːˈʁɜːi̯]/[ɒːˈʁɜːɾiː], even though such is actually somewhat unstable here, being not too uncommonly shifted to [ɔ̝ːˈʁɜːi̯]/[ɔ̝ːˈʁɜːɾiː] or [ɑːˈʁɜːi̯]/[ɑːˈʁɜːɾiː].
I would say that such come to the point that in many NAE dialects (mine own included), such merged vowels in prerhotic positions have shifted from being paired with their tense counterparts rather than their lax counterparts. For instance, here the vowel in "low" [ˈʟ̞oː] is much closer to that in "Laura" [ˈʟ̞ɔ̝ːʁəː] than that in "Law-ra" [ˈʟ̞ɒːʁəː] (hypothetically). Furthermore, there are certain special cases where due to elision a consonant separating /ɒ/ from a following /r/ is elided resulting in /ɒ/ actually coming into contact with said /r/ such that it actually contrasts with [ɔ̝] in such positions. A good example of such here is the frequent pronunciation of "already" as [ɒːˈʁɜːi̯]/[ɒːˈʁɜːɾiː], even though such is actually somewhat unstable here, being not too uncommonly shifted to [ɔ̝ːˈʁɜːi̯]/[ɔ̝ːˈʁɜːɾiː] or [ɑːˈʁɜːi̯]/[ɑːˈʁɜːɾiː].
Sorry about the duplicate there.
-I do not get why an dictionary that is supposed to be for "American English" insists only only providing cot-caught-merged pronunciations, when a slight majority of NAE-speakers still maintain the cot-caught distinction (at least from what I remember when there was a discussion about just how widespread such is).-
while phonologically this may be true, many Midwestern speakers (in Chicago, Buffalo, Detroit), especially women, have unrounded [ɑ] in ''dog, caught, all, call'' due to NCVS so A-like symbol is just fine, phonetically/acoustically it's no big deal.
law [lɑ]
lawyer [loj.ər] lawy-er it has a dyphthong lawy [loj] like in ''boy''
lawyer [lɑ.jr] law-yer is southern pronunciation
as for Laura, it's in the orange, Florida, horrible set.
unrounded vowel is used around NYC/NJ
>> many Midwestern speakers (in Chicago, Buffalo, Detroit), especially women, have unrounded [ɑ] in ''dog, caught, all, call'' due to NCVS so A-like symbol is just fine, phonetically/acoustically it's no big deal. <<
So then should other dictionaries use /p{:j@s/ for "pass" and others /pas/ because some Southerners and some Westerners/Canadians use those pronunciations? I should hope not.
-So then should other dictionaries use /p{:j@s/ for "pass" and others /pas/ because some Southerners and some Westerners/Canadians use those pronunciations? I should hope not. -
No dictionary uses /p{:j@s/ .
/pas/ sounds like a nice idea, tho'
Excuse me, y'all.
"Law-yer" ain't southern.
Some people in the south use it, but "loi-yer" is predominant in this part of the United States.
"Law-yer" is more likely heard in the area around the Great Lakes and the like.
I may be an ignert hayseed, but I have got a bit of eddgycation in my lifetime. Fokes roun these parts don't never say "law-yer."
(I'm actually in college in the Mid West, far from my hometown. I wouldn't be caught dead talking with that kind of accent, but I will defend my fellow southern belles.)
<<Excuse me, y'all.
"Law-yer" ain't southern.>>
Nobody here said that it was.
<<Some people in the south use it, but "loi-yer" is predominant in this part of the United States.>>
Well I think loy-er would be predominant in most regions of the US, but at the same time, the South is a very large and diverse dialectal region.
<<"Law-yer" is more likely heard in the area around the Great Lakes and the like.>>
Well you'd have to ask Travis about that. Honestly I don't know a great deal about its distribution, except that it's pretty much non-existent here in the Northeast.
<<I may be an ignert hayseed, but I have got a bit of eddgycation in my lifetime. Fokes roun these parts don't never say "law-yer.">>
I wouldn't consider it a sign of a lack of education if somebody used "law-yer"; where would you get that idea?
<<I wouldn't be caught dead talking with that kind of accent, but I will defend my fellow southern belles.>>
Against what? Nobody's alleging anything about southerners, and there's no reason to be ashamed of using a dialectal pronunciation.
I hear both. I believe both are "correct"
Correction: Actually one poster did say that law-yer was Southern; my "find" function wasn't working.
>><<"Law-yer" is more likely heard in the area around the Great Lakes and the like.>>
Well you'd have to ask Travis about that. Honestly I don't know a great deal about its distribution, except that it's pretty much non-existent here in the Northeast.<<
Likewise, I have practically never heard "law-yer" here in the Upper Midwest either. I would not be as sure about the Lower Midwest, but mind you the Lower Midwest has had significant contact with the South up to the very present.