IPA query

Mi5 Mick   Thursday, October 14, 2004, 04:16 GMT
Jim:
Is "laid" longer than "late" for you as it is for me?
Jim   Thursday, October 14, 2004, 04:28 GMT
It's interesting that Mxsmanic seems to think that Estuary English is standard whilst Australian English is not. Here's another interesting think I read:

"A term which is widely found nowadays is Estuary English, and many learners of English have been given the impression that this is a new accent of English. In reality there is no such accent, and the term should be used with care."

At least we can be pretty sure that Aussie English actually exists.
Jim   Thursday, October 14, 2004, 04:30 GMT
Mxsmanic   Thursday, October 14, 2004, 04:48 GMT
Many Americans might think that the difference between "pin" and "pen" is vowel length because they simply don't know any better; in school, assuming they were taught phonics at all (many were not, and thus are totally clueless), they were probably taught many incorrect things about English phonology, along the lines of what I've already described. The difference between /i/ and /I/ is not in length, but many phonics programs used to teach reading in the U.S. falsely claim that it is, calling /i/ "long e," and /I/ "short i," as bizarre as that seems to anyone with a modicum of knowledge about real phonetics. And the diphthong /AI/ is called "long i," even though it's a diphthong and not a monophthong and length isn't relevant at all. There is much weirdness in the terminology of phonics. It still works for teaching reading, but it leaves English speakers with strange ideas about phonetics that most of them retain for the rest of their lives (since they are taught otherwise thereafter).

Thus, what native English speakers think cannot always be trusted, unless they've actually studied real phonetics.

As for all English speakers being able to understand AusE when only vowel length distinguishes two utterances, that just isn't possible. Vowel length is not phonemic in standard English, so any two utterances distinguished from each other by vowel length alone will sound identical to speakers of standard English. This becomes pretty obvious when someone actually says something like this and others don't understand. The phonemes used and understood by both parties must be the same, otherwise they will not understand each other (that's why they are called phonemes in the first place). And most of the rare cases of misunderstanding between speakers of one variant of English pronunciation and another are due to disagreement of phonemes. (Note that, in long utterances, confusion is less likely because the context of the complete utterance helps to exclude any ambiguity even if words within that utterance are phonemically ambiguous.)

Estuary English is more standard in that it is reasonably close to RP and is widely heard (albeit not necessarily widely spoken). Australian English is much more rarely heard outside Australia.
Jim   Thursday, October 14, 2004, 04:51 GMT
I would normally pronounce the /ei/ in "laid" longer than the one in "late", yes. Is it phonemic or simply an allophonic variation caused by the difference in final consonant? I tend to think it's the latter: vowel length depends on phonetic environment. Now if we've got a flap "t" in this case, then there is no longer a difference in final consonant and the vowel length would be phonemic. Is there a flap "t" in "late"? How about in "I was late twice."? I don't detect one in my speach. But how about "I saw the waiter twice." verses "I saw the wader twice." (in the case of "t" flappers, of course)? I think there may be a longer /ei/ in "wader".
Jim   Thursday, October 14, 2004, 05:11 GMT
Mxsmanic,

I agree with you completely when it comes to those absurd terms taught in primary school phonics. Calling /ei, i:, ai, Ou/ and /ju:/ (using Tom's alphabet) "long a, e, i, o and u" is misleading and causes confusion as to what long vowels really are. Kids are also liable to be given the misimpression that there are only five short vowels as exemplified in the words "pat", "pet", "pit", "pot" and "putt". What about the vowel in "put" and the schwa vowel? What about the one in "pot" which is long for Americans?
Mi5 Mick   Thursday, October 14, 2004, 05:39 GMT
Well I'm impressed by Mxsmanic's knowledge, matched by his ignorance and narrow-mindedness.

Jim, I wouldn't worry about his contradictory ramblings. A cyber doctor, makeshift lawyer... and here, an underpaid ESL teacher living wayside in exile. It's funny how a lot of eccentrics find their way to Europe.
Jim   Thursday, October 14, 2004, 06:10 GMT
But it is impressive, ay, it's not as if he hasn't got a clue: he just can't seem to cop any new fact that might upset his apple-cart.
Jim   Thursday, October 14, 2004, 06:12 GMT
... a very pretty apple cart, though ... shame it's made of balsa wood.
Jim   Thursday, October 14, 2004, 07:51 GMT
"Vowel length is not phonemic in standard English," writes Mxsmanic "so any two utterances distinguished from each other by vowel length alone will sound identical to speakers of standard English."

Plain nonsense! Even speakers of dialects which don't use vowel length phonemically (Mxsmanic's so called "standard" accents) still differentiate between long and short vowels.

A distinction does not have to be phonemic to be percieved. Any fool could tell the cry of a drongo from that of a galah. Is there a phonemic difference it the cries of these two birds?

In almost every dialect of the language /.., ^, u, i/ and /e/ are short and /a:, u:, i:/ and /e:/ are long. Explain this away if vowel length is cannot be perceived by speakers of what you call "standard English".

"The phonemes used and understood by both parties must be the same, otherwise they will not understand each other (that's why they are called phonemes in the first place)."

Were this the case I wouldn't be able to understand rhotic English. How do you dream this stuff up, Mxsmanic?

"Estuary English is more standard in that it is reasonably close to RP and is widely heard (albeit not necessarily widely spoken). Australian English is much more rarely heard outside Australia."

If by "standard" you mean "widely heard", then fair enough, AusE isn't "standard". If by "standard" you mean "closer to RP" then AusE is more standard by far than anything you're going to hear in North America. In either case I wouldn't define "standard" like this.
Mxsmanic   Thursday, October 14, 2004, 19:47 GMT
As I've said, there seems to be considerable misunderstanding of the meaning of "phonemic."

Speakers may well use long and short vowels regularly and predictably in certain positions and contexts; but that does not mean that vowel length is phonemic. The [i] and [i:] are allphones of the same phoneme in English: they occur regularly and predictably in complementary ways in context, but there are no words that are distinguished from each other by the difference in length between these vowels, and so they are not phonemic, no matter how consistently speakers distinguish them.
Jim   Friday, October 15, 2004, 01:37 GMT
Mxsmanic,

A "considerable misunderstanding" by whom, as I've asked? I understand enough to know that the vowels in "some" and "pslam" are different phonemes. I understand well enough that it's length which distinguishes them in my accent. Open your mind to the possiblity that you could well be wrong before you go playing the wise guy.

Okay, [i] is an unstressed allphone of [i:] but the point is that to tell students to forget about vowel length would be, in my opinion, a mistake. This difference in stress manifests itself, at least in part, as a difference in vowel length. It is a similar case with the unstressed [u]* in "occupy": it's an allophone of the [u:] in "moon" but vowel length, though not phonemic, is still important. If they get the length wrong ESL students could easily be misunderstood.

So, you do accept that "Speakers may well use long and short vowels regularly and predictably in certain positions and contexts;" Well, I accept that "that does not mean that vowel length is phonemic." This is not what I saying at all.

Certain vowels regularly occur as long monophthongs and others regularly occur as short ones. Faced with the changing position of vowel phonemes as you go from one dialect to the next, the length of the vowel is something that you can rely on to distinguish one from another.

Do you deny that vowel position changes from dialect to dialect (or do you simply ignore any other dialect but your own, labling them "non-standard")? In AusE (and New Zealand English) the phonemes (Tom writes as) /a:/ and /^/ have shifted to the same position (which I write as) [â] (using the chart on page one). However, their length has kept them distinct. Thus length is phonemic in AusE (and NZE).

You don't, however, have to go down under to come across a situation where length is important. Just go to a different country (or even a different region in the same country) in which vowel position is different and, hey, you can rely on vowel length. You don't even need to leave your cozy little town to make use of length. It may not be phonemic (in your dialect) but it still is a good indication of which phoneme you're after; especially if you're an ESL student who hasn't quite got the hang of all the subtle position differences in English vowels.

If you believe that it is impossible to detect vowel length (even on a subconcious level, which would be good enough), then you're a bigger fool than I'd thought. Of course, you can detect it: how else could you have learnt it?

Any point on the Earth's surface can be specified by latitude and longitude but you don't loose anything if you throw altitude in as well. Just as the cartographer includes altitude in his map you might as well teach vowel length in your lesson even if the student isn't going to stray into a new terrain.

* I'm using the IPA symbol however the vowel in the Australian and New Zealand accents is actually central thus [ü] vs. [ü:] is more appropriate for us (using my symbols as on page one).
Mi5 Mick   Friday, October 15, 2004, 02:34 GMT
We're not playing with semantics here, 100 messages into a thread. As I've said, if you play around like that, you're asking for a cyclic discussion which burdens the rest of the forum, "Mxsmanic".

If you're still confused on the meaning of "phonemic" and the minimal pairs we've demonstrated for AusE, consult these papers before you post again:

"bud" vs "bard"
http://emsah.uq.edu.au/courses/ling1005/lec3b-03.PhoneticsII.pdf

"bid" vs "beard" and "dead" vs "dared"
http://www.ling.mq.edu.au/home/cox_felicity/vowel%20description22.pdf
Mxsmanic   Friday, October 15, 2004, 03:10 GMT
As I've said, vowel length is not phonemic in standard pronunciations of English; there is no particular reason to teach it to ESL students who do not seek to adopt a specific English pronunciation or suppress their own foreign accents (and very few ESL students wish to go this far). Explaining vowel length as if it had phonemic importance is highly misleading to students and wastes a tremendous amount of valuable time. Students must be taught to render and recognize phonemes; mere phonetic features can be left for later, should they wish to pursue the elimination of an accent.

It may well be true that some dialects of English use vowel length phonemically in some limited contexts, but unless students are being taught these specific dialects, this doesn't matter. In standard pronunciations of English, vowel length is irrelevant.

Students who pronounce all vowels with identical length will be understood in standard pronunciations of English without any difficulty. Likewise, students who do not distinguish vowel length in listening will still comprehend standard English without difficulty. Teaching vowel length distinctions is like teaching nasality in its uselessness.

ESL teaching is about obtaining practical results, and teaching idiosyncratic features of some English dialects such as vowel length, nasality, many aspects of intonation, etc., is not conducive to their goals.
Mi5 Mick   Friday, October 15, 2004, 03:15 GMT
As I've said, vowel length is phonemic in standard pronunciations of English, ie. AusE; there is good reason to teach it to ESL students.