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Windy-Wendy merger?
<<Where in the U.S. are you from? I assume you must be from some non pen-pin merging area as you don't have it.>>
Yes, I'm from Massachusetts. The pen-pin merger doesn't occur here in the Northeast.
<<so, why does this so-called "windy-wendy" merger occur?>>
Why do any sound changes occur?
<<Yes, I'm from Massachusetts. The pen-pin merger doesn't occur here in the Northeast.>>
How do you people pronounce "Worcester"? I've heard many people say "war chester", but I'm aware that the correct way to say it used by natives is a bit different. What is it?
Round here it's pronounced ["wUst@`] if you're rhotic like me, or ["wUst@] if you have a more traditional non-rhotic accent. This would be "Wooster" or "Woosta", with the "oo" sound of "foot". (The same pronunciation is also used for the Worcester in England.)
I don't know why, but I seem to be somewhat incapable of pronouncing most short "I" sounds. Even when I say the letter "I", it comes out more like "aye" in a somewhat Irish fashion. Though, I am not Irish.
I suppose that I can do it if I really look at it and try, but when I am reading or speaking, all of those sounds generally come out as "E". If I say a word such as "like" or "light", people have noticed that I raise the "I" sound.
<<I don't know why, but I seem to be somewhat incapable of pronouncing most short "I" sounds. Even when I say the letter "I", it comes out more like "aye" in a somewhat Irish fashion. Though, I am not Irish.
I suppose that I can do it if I really look at it and try, but when I am reading or speaking, all of those sounds generally come out as "E".>> Sorry, but I really am not sure what you're talking about, because you're not using any kind of phonetic transcription. Check out this site ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-SAMPA ) if you'd like to learn IPA and X-SAMPA. It may look daunting, but it's really not that hard to memorize the set of symbols needed to transcribe English. <<If I say a word such as "like" or "light", people have noticed that I raise the "I" sound.>> This I understand. It seems that you have what's called Canadian Raising.
<<If I say a word such as "like" or "light", people have noticed that I raise the "I" sound.>>
Yes, I agree with Lazar, this sounds like Canadian Raising. I'm Canadian, so of course I have it. Basically, whenever the sound traditionally called 'long I' (transcribed in X-SAMPA as /aI/) occurs before a voiceless consonant (p, t, k, f, s, th sometimes) it is raised slightly to [@I], sounding approximately like uh-ee. This process also occurs in much of the United States. Canadians and some Mid-Westerners also have a similar process with /au/ in words like 'house' or 'out'. Most Americans pronounce them [aU], while I pronounce it [EU], something like ehw. This is where the stereotype of Canadians saying 'aboot' comes from, though to me, it always seemed much closer to 'aboat'. In fact, my realization of /aU/ is very close to RP's GOAT set [@o].
<<Sorry, but I really am not sure what you're talking about, because you're not using any kind of phonetic transcription. Check out this site ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-SAMPA ) if you'd like to learn IPA and X-SAMPA. It may look daunting, but it's really not that hard to memorize the set of symbols needed to transcribe English.>>
Sorry for the confusion. I suppose what I am trying to say is that I most always pronounce the traditional [I] as [E]. I probably also raise the sound when I simply say the letter "I".
I’ve /I/ for "windy" and /E/ (~ Cardinal vowel #2, D. Jones) for"Wendy".
We’ve many international students here studying ESL who’ve trouble distinguishing between the vowel /I/ in <bit> and /e/ in <beat>; /E/ in <bet> and /a/ in <bat> and the like. We consider this a pronunciation problem.
I apologize. The message from Guess is actually from Buddhaheart. Before I could type in the name, the message was sent with the name "Guest".
I’ve /I/ for "windy" and /E/ (~ Cardinal vowel #2, D. Jones) for"Wendy". We’ve many international students here studying ESL who’ve trouble distinguishing between the vowel /I/ in <bit> and /e/ in <beat>; /E/ in <bet> and /a/ in <bat> and the like. We consider this a pronunciation problem.
>><<If I say a word such as "like" or "light", people have noticed that I raise the "I" sound.>>
Yes, I agree with Lazar, this sounds like Canadian Raising. I'm Canadian, so of course I have it. Basically, whenever the sound traditionally called 'long I' (transcribed in X-SAMPA as /aI/) occurs before a voiceless consonant (p, t, k, f, s, th sometimes) it is raised slightly to [@I], sounding approximately like uh-ee. This process also occurs in much of the United States. Canadians and some Mid-Westerners also have a similar process with /au/ in words like 'house' or 'out'. Most Americans pronounce them [aU], while I pronounce it [EU], something like ehw. This is where the stereotype of Canadians saying 'aboot' comes from, though to me, it always seemed much closer to 'aboat'. In fact, my realization of /aU/ is very close to RP's GOAT set [@o].<< Canadian Raising is not quite as simple, as in at least some dialects it applies in situations other than before fortis obstruents (I say "fortis" here because at least my dialect has voiceless obstruents which derive from phonemically lenis consonants which do not trigger raising). Most notably are immediately are before /r/ and before /@r/ within the same morpheme (in some lects it may not apply immediately after it, for instance in my idiolect "pliers" is ["p_hL\a:IR=:s] but my father pronounces it as ["p_hL\@:IR=:s]). However, raising by /@r/ may not be completely consistent, as there are words in my dialect which "should" have it but which do not, such as "visor" ["va:IzR=:] and "miser" ["ma:IzR=:]. Also, there are some other cases of it in my dialect, in the words "idle" ["@:I4M:], "Midol" ["m@:I4M:], and "bridle" ["br\@:I4M:] (but *not* "bridal" ["br\a:I4M:]) which are hard for me to really account for. Another note is that while it is very common for dialects to have Canadian Raising for /aI/ but lack Canadian Raising for /aU/, some dialects may actually have Canadian Raising for /aU/ but with such raising being weak enough that such really is inapparent if one is not either looking for it or speaking extremely informally. For instance, I assumed that my dialect only had Canadian Raising for /aI/, but then I found that sometimes in very informal speech I would pronounce /aU/ as [VU] or even [7U]. After noting that, I realized that there really was global raising of /aU/, but which is very weak in most registers and levels of stress, where such is only raised to [6U] and only noticable at all in cases where one can directly compare unraised and raised /aU/, such as in "how about" ["ha:U@:"b6U?].
Thanks, Travis; very detailed explanation. I meant to ask you earlier if you had Canadian Raising. I would be interested to know what percentage of Americans have at least some Canadian Raising, because it is excluded from GenAm, but is quite common, at least for /aI/. I've read two different theories for the origin of this phenomenon. First, that in Canadian English and some American varieties, the Great Vowel Shift of [i:] to [aI] was never completed before voiceless consonants (and, your variety, a few other positions), and stopped somewhere around [@I]. The other is that it descends from the Scots Vowel Length rule, which gives [aI] only before voiced fricatives, r, vowels and morpheme boundaries, with [@I] elsewhere. The first theory seems more likely to me.
Another question, Travis, do your phonemically lenis but phonetically voiceless consonants come from final obstruent devoicing? And if so, do you maintain the recoverability of the distinction through lengthening of the preceeding vowel?
>>Another question, Travis, do your phonemically lenis but phonetically voiceless consonants come from final obstruent devoicing? And if so, do you maintain the recoverability of the distinction through lengthening of the preceeding vowel?<<
They occur from any devoicing of lenis obstruents, whether due to final obstruent devoicing or due to plain old assimilation. The thing is that initial assigning of vowel length and consonant glottalization occurs before final obstruent devoicing or voicing assimilation. (I say initial assigning of vowel length because there are other phenomena IMD that modify vowel lengths, in particular intervocalic elision.) And yes, fortis-lenis distinctions are recoverable for postvocalic obstruents through vowel length and consonant glottalization distinctions secondary to it. Also, apparently, the ease of recovering fortis-lenis distinctions through such are specifically an adaptation to final obstruent devoicing in the dialects in this area.
I also pronounce "length" as [lINT] (linkth), and "strength" as [str\INT] (stringth). Is this a related phenomenon? I've noticed that others say [leNT] and [str\eNt] instead.
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