Distinguishing Western accents
Oh, people, why on earth can't you make up some kind of a nickname, I never know how many people are participating in the conversation and how should I address them!
To the first 'guest': I'm not sure I see how exactly is your comment connected to what I wrote.
To the second 'guest': Yes, it has already been said that traditional Western speech has [A] in all environments, and I don't doubt that (my only doubt is whether that kind of speech shouldn't rather be called 'old-fashioned' than 'traditional'), but what I wanted to know is how the 'guest' who said that he uses both [A] and [O] for the historic short 'o' pronounces words like 'bong' and 'doll'. I don't clearly remember ever having heard them pronounced with [A].
To the third 'guest': That dictionary, like all dictionaries I know, uses phonemic transcription, so the fact that they use the symbol 'A' is completely irrelevant to what I'm talking about.
Why did you link that video again?
And it doesn't even illustrate what you say because most tokens of 'song' to be heard on that video have Q or O.
"''I actually (correctly) guessed that a store clerk was from the Midwest when she pronounced the word "dollar" which almost sound like "daller". '' " <
>>
I don't understand, in the traditional Western dialect, DOLLAR rhymes with
CALLER, and both have the unrounded /A/ vowel rather the rounded /Q/. /A/ to /Q/ is Californian/Canadian vowel shift. Californian vowel shift is much more frequent in Canada than the Californian one is in California.If you consistently pronounce DOLL with /A/ but CALL, FALL with /Q/ you are low back unmerged. <<
You must have misunderstood my notation. "Daller" is fauxnetically [d{lr\=] not [dAlr\=]. What she used was [a], which almost sounds like [æ]. So I transcribed it as "daller", because transcribing it as "dahller" wouldn't make much sense, as dollar=dahller. [a] is used in NCVS speech. Thus I correctly assumed that she was from the Midwest.
-[a] is used in NCVS speech.-
In the mainstream NCVSspeech.
The advanced forms have [æ], and the traditional dialect has [A].
so, in the Great Lakes area ['kal@r] can be the pronunciation of either
1. caller (in speakers with advanced NCVS shift) or
2. collar (in speakers with mainstreem NCVS)
Talk about confusion.
Stocker (as pronounced by a person from Detroit or Chicago) sounds like Stacker (to a person from NYC, Toronto or L.A.).
<< The advanced forms have [æ], and the traditional dialect has [A].
so, in the Great Lakes area ['kal@r] can be the pronunciation of either
1. caller (in speakers with advanced NCVS shift) or
2. collar (in speakers with mainstreem NCVS)
Talk about confusion. <<
But as far as I know "collar" is shifted to [A] not [a].
Just out of curiosity, which shift does this speaker (Francis) have? The Canadian shift or the California vowel shift? I have a hard time telling the 2 shifts apart. From what I've read, the Canadian Shift (as measured in Winnipeg) causes /A-Q/ to merge to a round, low (or lower-mid), back vowel. In the California vowel shift, the vowel is unround, but much lower.
Francis has established that he is neither from California nor Canada and is from somewhere else in the US, presumably the West. So which shift is it: California or Canadian?
http://www2.zippyshare.com/v/86472443/file.html
-But as far as I know "collar" is shifted to [A] not [a].-
Not true. COLLAR has [A], already, and it shifts to [a] and then to [æ]...
caller [Q]-->[A]-->[a]
collar [A]-->[a]-->[æ]
I guess you can hear all these in Chicago, black speakers don't seem to have any shift at all ( caller [Q], collar [A]), young white males have the 1st shift (caller [A], collar [a]), while young and middle aged middle class females have the most progresssive shift (caller [a], collar [æ])). So, misunderstandings can be a problem, since callar and collar pronunciations overlap in 67% of cases, you have to guess them from the context... So, to a foreign ear, there is a phonetic merger in the area, when all population is discussed although there is no merger on the single user level.
***Oh, people, why on earth can't you make up some kind of a nickname, I never know how many people are participating in the conversation and how should I address them!***
Ha! Levee - it's no use whingeing about the excess of Guests in this Forum - you're simply banging your head against a brick wall. Live with it - the rest of us with monickers have to!
<< while young and middle aged middle class females have the most progresssive shift (caller [a], collar [æ])) <<
Hmm. Are you sure that the most progressive speakers have [a] for "caller"? I was aware of the [æ] pronunciation of "collar", but not the [a] in "caller".