Do you = Did you?

Johnny   Tue Jan 27, 2009 2:17 pm GMT
In American English, "jew" means "did you" (reduced form with assimilation): "Jew find out what happened?" = "Did you find out..."
What I have noticed is that in British English "jew" seems to be used for "Do you" instead. Is it so?

Jew = "Did you" and never "do you" (American)
Jew = "Do you" and never "did you" (British)
Johnny   Tue Jan 27, 2009 2:22 pm GMT
In case someone thinks I want to talk about Jews, I only used "jew" as a loose transcription of a phoneme that appears in those cases.
a Jew   Tue Jan 27, 2009 2:24 pm GMT
Jew=Jewish person
Caspian   Tue Jan 27, 2009 8:14 pm GMT
In British English, 'jew' is, as the person above me remarked, a Jewish person.

We do, however, have a word similar to the one which you are trying to depict - in fact two words - 'do you'.
Johnny   Tue Jan 27, 2009 9:10 pm GMT
And to think I even pointed out the word "jew" was just a phonemic transcription. Replace it with "joo" or "juh" if you don't like "jew".

Juh wanna go for a walk? = "Did you" or "Do you"?

I think the answer is "Did you" in American dialects, and "Do you" in British dialects.
Travis   Tue Jan 27, 2009 10:01 pm GMT
It depends. The dialect here, which most definitely is a North American dialect, very frequently has [ˈdɪːju(ː)]~[ˈdɪːjə(ː)] for "did you", somewhat frequently has [ˈd̥ʒ̥ʲʉ̯̆ŭ]~[ˈd̥ʒ̥ʲʉ̯u] for "do you", and only occasionally has [ˈd̥ʒ̥ʲʉ̯̆ŭ]~[ˈd̥ʒ̥ʲʉ̯u] for "did you". For "do you" it more commonly has [ˈdʲju(ː)] and for "did you" it very frequently has [ˈdɪd̥ʒ̥ʲʉ̯̆ŭ]~[ˈdɪd̥ʒ̥ʲʉ̯u] or, more extremely, [ˈd̥ʒ̥ːʲʉ̯̆ŭ]~[ˈd̥ʒ̥ːʲʉ̯u] (note the gemination). Note that such a pronunciation of "did you" may sound homophonous to "Jew" [ˈd̥ʒ̥ʲʉ̯̆ŭ]~[ˈd̥ʒ̥ʲʉ̯u], but it really is not.
Johnny   Tue Jan 27, 2009 10:37 pm GMT
Hmm, I'll need to pay attention to what I hear and try to figure out whether the "jew" I hear are actually "do you" or "did you". Anyway, since your posts are always so technical that I need to find out what some words mean, reading about "germination" I found this on Wikipedia:

With affricates, however, this does not occur. For instance:

* orange juice [ˈɒrɪndʒ dʒuːs]


And I realized I might not even be able to pronounce orange juice! Do you really need two /dʒ/?
Travis   Tue Jan 27, 2009 11:27 pm GMT
>.Hmm, I'll need to pay attention to what I hear and try to figure out whether the "jew" I hear are actually "do you" or "did you". Anyway, since your posts are always so technical that I need to find out what some words mean, reading about "germination" I found this on Wikipedia:

With affricates, however, this does not occur. For instance:

* orange juice [ˈɒrɪndʒ dʒuːs]


And I realized I might not even be able to pronounce orange juice! Do you really need two /dʒ/?<<

Yes, in pretty much all English dialects I know of you do indeed need to pronounce [dʒdʒ] (slight phonetic variation aside) when saying "orange juice". And such is not geminate, either, but actually is two distinctly separately pronounced [dʒ]s.

(Mind you that there are English dialects with at least phonetic gemination of affricates, but they normally result from the reduction of clusters, such as [gdʒ] > [ddʒ] > [dʒː], which indeed has happened inconsistently in the dialect here. Such dialects still have a doubled [dʒ] in cases like "orange juice".)
Uriel   Wed Jan 28, 2009 4:02 am GMT
I say something like "ornch juice".

And the J-sound is wholly associated with "did you", for me. When I run together "do you", it sounds more like how a British person would say "dew" -- dyoo -- and has no J-sound at all. When I hear "'Jew' think I would?" I automatically mentally translate that as "Did you think I would?" and not "Do you think I would?"
Caspian   Wed Jan 28, 2009 8:47 am GMT
They don't mean the same thing. 'Did you' is past tense, 'Do you' is present. They're not interchangeable.

"Did you want to go for a walk?" means "At some point in the past, but not so long ago, was you intention to go for a walk?"

"Do you want to go for a walk?" means "At this present moment in time, is your intention to go for a walk?"
from OHIO   Thu Jan 29, 2009 12:29 am GMT
"Did you" is pronounced "jew" because of the "d" (the 2nd one) is inbetween 2 vowels.
I don't see how "do you" can be pronounced "jew", though.
me   Thu Jan 29, 2009 1:00 am GMT
to me, it would depend on the context. "'Jew' want to go for a walk?" could both mean "Do you want to go for a walk?" and "Did you want to go for a walk?"

im canadian btw so maybe we are the happy medium! :P
Uriel   Thu Jan 29, 2009 4:39 am GMT
<<They don't mean the same thing. 'Did you' is past tense, 'Do you' is present. They're not interchangeable.

"Did you want to go for a walk?" means "At some point in the past, but not so long ago, was you intention to go for a walk?"

"Do you want to go for a walk?" means "At this present moment in time, is your intention to go for a walk?">>

Actually, in colloquial American, they ARE often interchangeable, and could both mean "do you want to go for a walk" (present tense). It doesn't work in reverse, though -- you still can only use "did" to refer to the past.
Homo Mutantis   Fri Feb 06, 2009 8:50 pm GMT
"Jew" always sounds to me as a "did you" contraction
Another Guest   Sat Feb 07, 2009 4:17 am GMT
There are some Hispanic accents where "y" is pronounced "j", so if I were to hear "Jew want to go for a walk?", I would probably assume that "You want to go for a walk?" is meant.