Californian /A,a/

Mari   Thu Mar 09, 2006 7:05 pm GMT
And you know I am "young" with what evidence??

And YES; I do not know how to write out exact phonemic spellings and YES, Yolanda your were right. My friend says that his so called accent is like a thick "western cowboy" talk.
Yolanda   Thu Mar 09, 2006 7:09 pm GMT
Answer my question first....
How old ARE you??????
Mari   Thu Mar 09, 2006 7:10 pm GMT
Do I HAVE to give you an exact age????
I'm a teenager; anything wrong with that?
Yolanda   Thu Mar 09, 2006 7:14 pm GMT
So I was right. If you want to know, I suspected that you were not older than twenty one when I noticed how shy your writing was.
There are other "teenagers" here to.
ABOUT the whole Texas accent thing (if that's how we best know it)
from where is "your friend" from????

There's nothing wrong with being a teenager. ;)
Uriel   Thu Mar 09, 2006 8:03 pm GMT
Mari, XSAMPA and IPA are specialized transcription systems that pretty much only people in the linguistics field are going to know, so don't sweat it if you don't know 'em, or have an interest in learning them. Just write the way you want to write, since only about half the people here will understand them, anyway.
Kirk   Thu Mar 09, 2006 9:55 pm GMT
<<If you (Kirk) cannot decipher the sounds and need exact dictionary phonemic spellings -work on your background usage.>>

No, the thing is that fauxnetic spellings are often vague. One person's spoken vowel for an orthographic one can often be quite different. I understand not everyone knows technical transcription systems but unfortunately it does leave things vague for others.

One point I brought up is that "pair" and "friend" do not have diphthongs in the spoken language while they do in the written one, so using them fauxnetically inherently leaves things vague.
Travis   Thu Mar 09, 2006 9:56 pm GMT
>>Mari, XSAMPA and IPA are specialized transcription systems that pretty much only people in the linguistics field are going to know, so don't sweat it if you don't know 'em, or have an interest in learning them. Just write the way you want to write, since only about half the people here will understand them, anyway.<<

Uriel, the matter is that to try to simply "phonetically write" things using, say, English orthography or some modification thereof is practically useless for any kind of actual serious purposes. For instance, when someone writes "ah", what they mean depends on what their native dialect is; if they are from much of English-speaking North America, they likely mean [A], but if they are from various areas of the Upper Midwest they may mean [a] (which is what "ah" intuitively signifies to me) or even [{]. Fundamentally, the matter is that "writing the way you want to write", if it means what I think it does, is of absolutely no use whatsoever.

Notation such as IPA and X-SAMPA (I am using X-SAMPA here) however are not affected by one's native dialect; [A] and [a] are far more fixed quantities than "ah" is. Consequently, notational schemes such as IPA or its ASCII-based equivalent X-SAMPA are necessary to be able to mark phones and phonemes completely independent of the sound-mappings native to one's own dialect. One should note that to say that such are "specialized transcription systems that pretty much only people in the linguistics field are going to know" is no excuse, especially if you already know of the existance of these systems AND have immediate access to materials with which you can learn them (the links earlier in the thread). It is one thing to be simply ignorant (that is, to not know better), but there is no excuse whatsoever for being *willfully* ignorant; to say that such systems are "specialized" is only resorting to the fallacy of argumentum ad populum.
Kirk   Thu Mar 09, 2006 10:07 pm GMT
Also, they're not *that* hard to learn (provided you want to). I learned IPA and X-SAMPA several years ago when I was in my late teens and know others that did likewise, so age is not really an excuse either. Obviously, you may not have a real need for learning phonetic transcription in your life but when what you're talking about delves into the domain which only accurate transcription can describe, then you might consider learning at least a little bit. A lot of people on this site and other language-related sites use it, so it'd certainly be useful if you plan on accurately talking about pronunciation with other people, as well. Good luck if you decide to do so and feel free to ask us any questions :)
Guest   Fri Mar 10, 2006 2:40 am GMT
Start a thread explaining X-Sampa/IPA.
Uriel   Fri Mar 10, 2006 2:51 am GMT
<<One should note that to say that such are "specialized transcription systems that pretty much only people in the linguistics field are going to know" is no excuse, especially if you already know of the existance of these systems AND have immediate access to materials with which you can learn them (the links earlier in the thread). It is one thing to be simply ignorant (that is, to not know better), but there is no excuse whatsoever for being *willfully* ignorant; to say that such systems are "specialized" is only resorting to the fallacy of argumentum ad populum. >>

I thought you were the one who didn't consider written language "important".

It doesn't have to be an exact transcription of the sound for me, Trav -- I can get by with an approximation, and what Kirk calls "fauxnetics" works just fine for me.
Kirk   Fri Mar 10, 2006 4:33 am GMT
<<I thought you were the one who didn't consider written language "important". >>

Who ever said that?

<<
It doesn't have to be an exact transcription of the sound for me, Trav -- I can get by with an approximation, and what Kirk calls "fauxnetics" works just fine for me.>>

Right, fauxnetics works for some purposes, and that's fine. I at least don't expect everyone to be familiar with phonetic transcription. But especially comparing things cross-dialectally with fauxnetic spellings (especially related to spoken vowel sounds) inherently creates confusion as it already has here on this thread.

<<Start a thread explaining X-Sampa/IPA.>>

I wrote a tutorial on another site for just this purpose. If anyone's interested, check it out here:

http://www.langcafe.net/viewtopic.php?t=278
Jimbo   Fri Mar 10, 2006 4:35 am GMT
The answer to a bunch of your Wisconsin pronounciation questions.
http://www.misspronouncer.com
Can't help with the California stuff.
Enjoy!
jim
Travis   Fri Mar 10, 2006 7:52 am GMT
>>I thought you were the one who didn't consider written language "important".<<

That is, from a linguistic standpoint. However, though, the role of IPA and X-SAMPA is quite important linguistically, as they provide a means of clearly marking phones in a language-independent fashion (however, I have found that even they aren't necessarily always precise enough).

>>It doesn't have to be an exact transcription of the sound for me, Trav -- I can get by with an approximation, and what Kirk calls "fauxnetics" works just fine for me.<<

The thing is that such approximations are absolutely useless linguistically; to me, many fauxnetic transcriptions could indicate a whole range of different things, to the point that there is little use in trying to guess which is intended by the writer.
Moony   Fri Mar 10, 2006 2:01 pm GMT
Roseanne Bar pronounces MOM as [mO:m] with an open [O] (like in Italian può or Portuguese avó) not like /A/ or /a/

BTW, everyone speaks of front and back A's. Could it be centralized?
Is there such thing?
Mari   Fri Mar 10, 2006 5:44 pm GMT
I'm not sure whether support would be the right word but thanks anyway Uriel.
I'll look into the sites and see what I can find. I'll try an see beyond "fauxnetic transcritions".