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How do Americans pronounce the word 'now'?
Some Americans pronounce 'now' as [nau], others pronounce it [næu].
I wanna know which is more common, [au] or [æu]? Another question about pronunciations, how do you pronounce the word 'beer', [bIr] or [bi:r], which is more common, thx.
The usual pronunciation of "now" in most North American English dialects is [na:U], not [n{:U]. As for "beer", I myself pronunce it as [bI:r\], which has a vowel that is lax and somewhat centralized, but which is long due to vowel length allophony.
The Merriam-Webster uses [æu], not [au]. But the dict says that [æu] is more common in Southern and south Midland speech.
I think it's a antinomy. Since "[æu] is (only) more common in Southern and south Midland", then [au] must be more common than [æu] all over the country (the States). Is the M-W wrong?
I (in central Massachusetts) pronounce "now" as [naU]. I perceive that the onset of my [aU] is a bit farther front than the onset of my [aI], but I wouldn't say that it reaches the level of *[{U].
As for "beer", I pronounce it [bI@`]. For my dialect it's necessary to employ the rhotic centering diphthong [I@`] because I maintain word-internal phonemic distinctions like: nearer - ["nI@`@`] mirror - ["mIr\@`] serious - ["sI@`i@s] Sirius - ["sIr\i@s] But I speak in a Northeast US dialect that is very conservative in this regard. In most American English dialects (including General American), the vowels in the above word pairs have merged. The merged sequence tends to fall between [Ir\] and [I@`]; I don't think it's common for it to go as high as [ir].
>>'Now' is pronounced "nau" almost everywhere in the English speaking world except in the interior of Canada where Canadian rounding causes it to sound like 'noh'<<
Nah, that's not true. Well I say "hæu næu bræun cæu". Listen to the following "æu" pronunciation which is fairly common: http://www.jahozafat.com/0058493028/MP3S/Movies/Anchorman_The_Legend_Of_Ron_Burgundy/hownowbrowncow.mp3
I'm really confused.
In the book "American Accent Training", the "ow" sound is described as follows: "The ow sound is usually indicated by [äu], which would be ah+ooh. This may have been accurate at some point in some locations, but the sound is now generally [æo]. Town is [tæon], how is [hæo], loud is [læod], and so on." The ow sound is now GENERALLY [æo] (or [æu]), is that true?
I somehow missed where "ow" in GAE somehow became [{U] rather than being [aU], which is what it definitely seems like to me at least (whereas [{U] sounds quite bizarre to my ears). If anything, they might be using "æ" in such cases for lack of a better way of distinguishing between [a] and [A], as while GAE has [A] in words like "not", [{] (what you write as "æ") is much closer to the [a] which is the actual starting point of the diphthong [aU]. If truly [{U] or even [{O] (I am not sure what you mean by "o" above, as you clearly aren't using something like IPA or X-SAMPA) is meant, though, I would have to say definitely NO here; GAE still most definitely has [aU] for such.
What's interesting is that several of my dictionaries indicate [æu] as the sound for "ow" words too.
e.g. click the red speaker to hear the audio in the following http://www.m-w.com/dictionary/cat ('kat) http://www.m-w.com/dictionary/now ('nau) http://www.m-w.com/dictionary/not ('nät) Note "cat" and "now" above share the same initial vowel, whereas the vowel in "not" is different.
The matter here is that the starting position the GAE "now" diphthong is neither the vowel in GAE "father", which is [A], nor is the vowel in GAE "that", which is [{]. Rather, it is an unrounded low front vowel that is slightly lower and slightly more backed than [{], that is, [a]. Note, though, that in many dialects affected by the Northern Cities Vowel Shift, such as my own, the vowel in "father" has actually shifted from [A] to [a], and consequently such dialects could actually have the "father" vowel as the starting point for the "now" diphthong. However, many of these dialect also will have the starting point of the "now" diphthongs backed from cardinal [a], and thusly between cardinal [a] and [A], which only makes such actually further from cardinal [{].
<<Some Americans pronounce 'now' as [nau], others pronounce it [næu].
I wanna know which is more common, [au] or [æu]?>> I'm from California and pronounce that diphthong as [{U], never [aU]. [{U] is the almost-universal pronunciation here in California, at least. <<Another question about pronunciations, how do you pronounce the word 'beer', [bIr] or [bi:r], which is more common, thx.>> I personally pronounce it [bIr\], but not all Americans do. There is a general rule for this in my dialect, that being that I always have lax vowels pre-rhotically (except [A]). Thus, I pronounce the following words as follows: "beer" [bIr\] "bear" [bEr\] "bore" [bOr\] "berry/Barry" [bEr\i] <<Is the M-W wrong?>> I think [{U] is more widespread than it used to be. It's certainly not just a Southern or Southern Midland feature, as it's universal here in California English, which is not a Southern or Southern Midland dialect. In any case, it's clear not all places have [{U]. Travis mentioned he has [aU] and he's from Wisconsin--I actually met someone from Wisconsin today and his diphthong there sounded noticeably different compared to mine (it was one of the things that tipped me off to the fact that he wasn't Californian even before he said where he was from). I'd say that his "how/now" diphthong was somewhere in between [aU] and [AU] as I heard it, but definitely not [{U].
>><<Some Americans pronounce 'now' as [nau], others pronounce it [næu].
I wanna know which is more common, [au] or [æu]?>> I'm from California and pronounce that diphthong as [{U], never [aU]. [{U] is the almost-universal pronunciation here in California, at least.<< The matter, though, is that some individuals seem to have this preconceived notion that California English is somehow "standard" for NAE dialects in the US today (aka "American English"), despite that many features of California English today are clearly outside of the notional "General American". Consequently, someone writing this one particular pronunciation guide might have decided to use pronunciations more in line with California English ones than conservative General American ones.
<<The matter, though, is that some individuals seem to have this preconceived notion that California English is somehow "standard" for NAE dialects in the US today (aka "American English"), despite that many features of California English today are clearly outside of the notional "General American". Consequently, someone writing this one particular pronunciation guide might have decided to use pronunciations more in line with California English ones than conservative General American ones.>>
Yeah, maybe, but I'd have to say when listening to people from other areas and other speakers on TV [{U] seems common, so the guide might have been basing it off of common usage amongst real speakers today as compared to conservative notions of General American. But it still should be stated that [{U] is of course by no means the only pronunciation heard in America.
I was really amazed by all these posts here. As an ESL student, I was always wondering about the pronunciation of 'now'. I say it as [{U] from now on.
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