How to Fake English

Gabriel : « The tendency of English speakers to turn simple vowels into diphthongs when they speak a foreign language is something I've also noticed. It's a question of phonotactics I suppose. »

Absolument !

>>The tendency of English speakers to turn simple vowels into diphthongs when they speak a foreign language is something I've also noticed. It's a question of phonotactics I suppose. When faced with the Spanish word "norte", the tendency is to use /eI/ for the final 'e'. I never understood why they had to do this, since English has the vowel phoneme in 'bet' that is much closer to the native Spanish realization. Of course, this phoneme has a restricted distribution in English, so I guess that's the reason. The same happens with the 'o' in 'carro', being a monophthong in Spanish.<<

[eI] has a restricted distribution in *some* English dialects, in those alternating with [e] based on syllable closedness or simply whether it is followed by a consonant combined with stress/formality. However, in other English dialects, [eI] is found in practically all positions, the only position [e] is found in being before /r/ (if there is an incomplete Mary-merry-marry merger or such a merger has favored [e] over [E]).

When you speak of the Spanish [e] being closer to the English [E] (the "bet" vowel) than English [eI], are you really just referring to monophthonginess being the factor that makes it closer to the English [E]? The reason why I ask this is that at least to myself, the Spanish [e] is quite high, to the point that it seems more like [i] than at least the [e] in the dialect here, so it seems weird to speak of it somehow being close to [E] besides being a monophthong.

Since there is no [e]-[E] opposition in Spanish, a range of possible realizations for /e/ can be found in native speakers. However, I don't think it's ever closer to [i]. Having taught English to native speakers of Spanish, I have often found that the /{/ in TRAP is more readily perceived as Spanish /e/ but I've never had a student perceive any realization of English /i/ as Spanish /e/. All this refers to River Plate Spanish, it may be different in other dialects.

>>[eI] has a restricted distribution in *some* English dialects, in those alternating with [e] based on syllable closedness or simply whether it is followed by a consonant combined with stress/formality. However, in other English dialects, [eI] is found in practically all positions, the only position [e] is found in being before /r/ (if there is an incomplete Mary-merry-marry merger or such a merger has favored [e] over [E])<<

I was referring to the restricted distribution of [E] as in BET, DRESS, etc. No word in English ends in [E].

>>Since there is no [e]-[E] opposition in Spanish, a range of possible realizations for /e/ can be found in native speakers. However, I don't think it's ever closer to [i]. Having taught English to native speakers of Spanish, I have often found that the /{/ in TRAP is more readily perceived as Spanish /e/ but I've never had a student perceive any realization of English /i/ as Spanish /e/. All this refers to River Plate Spanish, it may be different in other dialects.<<

I did not say that it is really that close to cardinal [i] at all, but rather I meant that Spanish [e] is high enough to be confusable with /i/ at least here. Of course, an important factor here is that the important distinction between [i] and [I] is actually not just height but rather frontness, and thus a wide range of heights can actually be perceived as [i] (for example, the German [I] will sound almost as if it were [i] to me at times). Consequently, it does not take the Spanish [e] to be much higher than the [e] here (which is probably laxer than cardinal) to be potentially perceived as [i] even if it not close to actual cardinal [i].

Of course then, the main kinds of Spanish one encounters here are Mexican Spanish and Puerto Rican Spanish. Consequently, there may very well be some differences with respect to particular vowels' positions between them and River Plate Spanish.

>>I was referring to the restricted distribution of [E] as in BET, DRESS, etc. No word in English ends in [E].<<

In most dialects. Mine has [jE] for unstressed "yeah", but that's a special case, as it is still the only instance of final [E] in it.

I have noticed in my own speech and in the speech of fellow Minnesotans that the word day is sometimes pronounced similarly to the Spanish de, very tense and without any dipthong (additionally, a certain politically incorrect friend often says that things are "gay" [ge])

One thing that's amusing to me being from Minnesota is that since most other North American have more diphthongized vowels than mine, any obvious diphthong sounds 'Southern' to me, leading to even Iowans sounding like they have a little twang in their speech.

>>One thing that's amusing to me being from Minnesota is that since most other North American have more diphthongized vowels than mine, any obvious diphthong sounds 'Southern' to me, leading to even Iowans sounding like they have a little twang in their speech.<<

While I tend to not that strongly notice word-final diphthongized vowels, *any* medial diphthongized vowels, especially [eI], sound quite accented, and generally non-Upper Midwestern (Iowa, Indiana, and Illinois south of Chicagoland really don't count as Upper Midwestern in reality).

Travis, how do you pronounce "bait" and "bet"? For me, the "ay" in "okay" is the same as the "ai" in "bait", not the "e" in "bet". I can't give you a phonetic transcription.

⊇ω(こチ(よ

>>Travis, how do you pronounce "bait" and "bet"? For me, the "ay" in "okay" is the same as the "ai" in "bait", not the "e" in "bet". I can't give you a phonetic transcription.<<

My pronunciations for these words are:

"bait" : [be?] (never [beI?])
"bet" : [bE?]
"okay" : [o"k_he:] (sometimes [o"k_he:I], especially when emphatic, but even then the diphthong is rather weak)

Travis--same here.