Accent with the strangest vowel sounds

Uriel   Mon Sep 05, 2005 7:48 am GMT
It IS exotic, Snipsa. I remember hearing you on the other forum -- quite startling. But cute!
Ed   Mon Jun 12, 2006 10:40 pm GMT
From my point of view Americans have the strangest vowel sounds of any any native English speakers. The way they say short O sounds in particular is very alien to my ears, for example "hot" sounds as it might be spelled with an A rather than an O and sounds rather like my "heart".
Ed   Tue Jun 13, 2006 12:58 am GMT
> Ed, this is true. However the Standard British English pronunciation of 'hot' ("hawt") has the 'aw' sound of "awful" and "awesome." I don't think the 'o' in hot has been pronounced as a genuine 'o' ("oh") in English since at least Chaucer's time.

I would not say that Standard British English pronounces "hot" with the same sound as the "aw" of "awful". This may have been true in the past, but it now confined to a very tiny minority in the most rarified and mostly elderly RP circles. Such a pronunciation is often regarded as comical and archaic even by the majority of RP speakers. For example the Queen would once rhyme "cross" with "horse" but even she has moderated her pronunciation of this sound in more recent years.

Unfortunately I don't know IPA or X-SAMPA so it difficult to describe these sounds and perhaps for you "awful" has the same sound as British "hot", but for me the sounds are quite different.

The British short "o", as in "hot" is rather like (but not the same as) the Afrikaans short 'o' in 'bom' (bomb) whereas the 'aw' in 'awful' is similar to 'ô' in "môre" (morning), not that the analogy is going to be much good I don't think!
Jim C, Jorvicskyre   Tue Jun 13, 2006 12:58 am GMT
I like Pablo Francisco's impression of, what I gues is a valley girl accent?

Instead of "Bull Shit" its "Baaahl Shiiaht!
Kirk   Tue Jun 13, 2006 12:59 am GMT
<<Ed, this is true. However the Standard British English pronunciation of 'hot' ("hawt") has the 'aw' sound of "awful" and "awesome.">>

What do you mean? RP pronounces "aw" differently from the sound in RP "hot." In RP:

"awful" ["O:fU5]
"hot" [hQt]

<<I don't think the 'o' in hot has been pronounced as a genuine 'o' ("oh") in English since at least Chaucer's time.>>

Even in Chaucer's English "hot" was likely pronounced [hQt] or [hOt], not [hot].
Cathy Risden   Wed Oct 24, 2007 3:17 pm GMT
What are the vowel sound in my Name?
Milton   Wed Oct 24, 2007 4:21 pm GMT
''From my point of view Americans have the strangest vowel sounds of any any native English speakers. The way they say short O sounds in particular is very alien to my ears, for example "hot" sounds as it might be spelled with an A rather than an O and sounds rather like my "heart".''


You know, that there are theories which claim /A/ is the older sound, and /Q/ (rounding) is a recent innovation. For example, German ALLES and WestUS all /Al/... is more logical than East US /Ql/ or British /o(U)l, ou/
Travis   Wed Oct 24, 2007 4:39 pm GMT
>>You know, that there are theories which claim /A/ is the older sound, and /Q/ (rounding) is a recent innovation. For example, German ALLES and WestUS all /Al/... is more logical than East US /Ql/ or British /o(U)l, ou/<<

Things aren't this simiple here. What happened is really this:

Early New English [a5] > early Late New English [O:5]

There was no [A] step here at all, as no /A/ phoneme existed yet at that point; /{/ and /A:/ were only created relatively late in the ENE period from earlier /a/.

Later on, in very many North American English dialects, [O:] was lowered to [Q] (which I am not marking as having vowel length here as these same dialects lost phonemic vowel length). This resulted in eastern NAE [Q:5] (whose vowel length is allophonic rather than phonemic).

As for the [A:5] in western NAE dialects in the US, this resulted from [A] undergoing phonemic merger with [Q], which resulted in [A] in the western US. However, some dialects in the western US, specifically in California, have shifted this [A] back towards [Q]. The matter is, though, that this [A] has no direct connection with the [a] found in ENE, much the less that found in Standard German.