Linguistic Miscellany Thread

[Salmoneus]

Pronouncing final /i/ as [e] is primarily a singing thing in NAE, not something in normal everyday speech.

It's at least part of an American English stereotype, even if it's not true - something people do when putting on an american accent. It's also leaked out of that into slang, at least for the word "party", which often occurs as "partay" now. At such partays, people may well also get bizzay. I have also heard the expression "get readay to partay", although only ironically.

I think it also happens natively in some northern UK dialects? Presumably where happY never became /i/ in the first place.


Ryu: pretty sure I've even heard /bEb{/...

[mèþru]

Partay and bizzay are intensified/ironic forms.

[Salmoneus]

Partay and bizzay are intensified/ironic forms.

But people don't ironically intensify tendencies that don't already exist...

That's why I said it has leaked into slang - 'partay' is just a word with final /eI/, but it's a word with final /eI/ because it's imitating people saying 'party' with a lowered final /i/.


And now that i'm thinking about it, do sloanes do something like this too or am I just imagining things now?

[linguistcat]

Partay and bizzay are intensified/ironic forms.

But people don't ironically intensify tendencies that don't already exist...

They aren't ironically intensified tho. They are ironic or intensified, and used in such situations. Ironic intensification is a whole separate thing

[mèþru]

What linguistcat said

[Ares Land]

I've got that Beastie Boys song stuck in my head now. I hope you're pleased with yourselves.

[Man in Space]

Lots of people, of all ages, have

Code: Select all

[i] -> [iç]

word finally. I caught myself doing too, to my consternation (it is a little annoying).

When I was at uni, my Field Methods class studied Bambara Mandinka. I think I remember our informant doing this at least once.

[swampyankee]

I live in Connecticut. This is not particularly special --- about 3 million other people do, too.

I've noticed some oddities(?)

1) Vocabulary isn't entirely consistent. That long sandwich variously called a sub, a hero, a torpedo, etc depending on where one lives is called a grinder in much of the state, but the term is quite uncommon in the New Haven area and to the west, along Long Island Sound, towards New York. When my younger daughter started at a Catholic girls' high school in the middle of the state, she was mystified by the term "grinder," as she had never heard it before. As an aside, relatively few people use the word "hoagie" unless referring to the songwriter.

2) "t"s in the middle of words tend to be replaced by glottal stops: New Bri'ain, not New Britain, in a way that varies statewide.

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Any other fine-scale regionalisms people have noticed?

[mèþru]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2r0h2mNz91M[url][/url]I live near where Jon Stewart grew up, can confirm he's speaking the truth. We really do use both south and north regionalisms, but we are distinct.

[Zaarin]

2) "t"s in the middle of words tend to be replaced by glottal stops: New Bri'ain, not New Britain, in a way that varies statewide.

Debuccalization of /t/ before /n/ (or its syllabic equivalent) is characteristic of a lot of North American dialects. Post-vocalic [t] is practically non-existent in my dialect because /t/ will almost always surface as either [ʔ] or [ɾ] when not initial; I can't think of any exception off the top of my head.


Speaking of regional accents, I recently finished binge-watching TNG, and I have a curiosity about a certain feature of Patrick Stewart's accent. He has a very prominent [æ] vowel in places where even as an American I'd expect [ɑ]. Anyone know if this is part of his native accent (Wikipedia says he's from Yorkshire) or if this is a "hyper-Americanism" he picked up while living in the States?

[Nortaneous]

2) "t"s in the middle of words tend to be replaced by glottal stops: New Bri'ain, not New Britain, in a way that varies statewide.

Debuccalization of /t/ before /n/ (or its syllabic equivalent) is characteristic of a lot of North American dialects. Post-vocalic [t] is practically non-existent in my dialect because /t/ will almost always surface as either [ʔ] or [ɾ] when not initial; I can't think of any exception off the top of my head.

There's variation in realization of unstressed /-tən/ sequences in AmE, between [-ʔn̩] and [-ɾɪn]. I don't know whether this variation is regional or random, but individuals are generally consistent in having one or the other.

Speaking of regional accents, I recently finished binge-watching TNG, and I have a curiosity about a certain feature of Patrick Stewart's accent. He has a very prominent [æ] vowel in places where even as an American I'd expect [ɑ]. Anyone know if this is part of his native accent (Wikipedia says he's from Yorkshire) or if this is a "hyper-Americanism" he picked up while living in the States?

Such as?

[Linguoboy]

Speaking of regional accents, I recently finished binge-watching TNG, and I have a curiosity about a certain feature of Patrick Stewart's accent. He has a very prominent [æ] vowel in places where even as an American I'd expect [ɑ]. Anyone know if this is part of his native accent (Wikipedia says he's from Yorkshire) or if this is a "hyper-Americanism" he picked up while living in the States?

The main cases I can think of where this happens are in foreign borrowings, particularly from Italian and Spanish. In BE these are mapped to /æ/ whereas in AE they map to /ɑ/. A prominent example is in Silence of the Lambs, where Anthony Hopkins says "with f[æ]va beans and a nice Chi[æ]nti". It's the only giveaway in that movie that his native variety is not American.

(As an aside, now I really want to hear someone say "Chianti" in a broad Chicago accent.)

[Zaarin]

2) "t"s in the middle of words tend to be replaced by glottal stops: New Bri'ain, not New Britain, in a way that varies statewide.

Debuccalization of /t/ before /n/ (or its syllabic equivalent) is characteristic of a lot of North American dialects. Post-vocalic [t] is practically non-existent in my dialect because /t/ will almost always surface as either [ʔ] or [ɾ] when not initial; I can't think of any exception off the top of my head.

There's variation in realization of unstressed /-tən/ sequences in AmE, between [-ʔn̩] and [-ɾɪn]. I don't know whether this variation is regional or random, but individuals are generally consistent in having one or the other.

I'm guessing the flapped /t/ in that environment is idiosyncratic, because I've heard it but not often.

Speaking of regional accents, I recently finished binge-watching TNG, and I have a curiosity about a certain feature of Patrick Stewart's accent. He has a very prominent [æ] vowel in places where even as an American I'd expect [ɑ]. Anyone know if this is part of his native accent (Wikipedia says he's from Yorkshire) or if this is a "hyper-Americanism" he picked up while living in the States?

Such as?

Of course now that someone asks for an example I can't think of one. One instance I recall involved l[æ]va, which could fall under what Linguoboy described, but I'm quite sure I heard him use it with native words as well.

[Pabappa]

Some Canadians say læva, I've heard it on YouTube. And mærio, etc.

Zaarin how do you pronounce "retire", "autism", "retard" (noun)? Sorry couldn't think of another example of post tonic unstr3ssed /t/.
Edit: also "leotard".
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Also how about "potash"? I didn't realize it was just pot + ash until adulthood, so I gave it the vowels of potassium. For those with glottal stops and/or flaps, does this word fit that pattern or is the t preserved?

[Zaarin]

Some Canadians say læva, I've heard it on YouTube. And mærio, etc.

Zaarin how do you pronounce "retire", "autism", "retard" (noun)? Sorry couldn't think of another example of post tonic unstr3ssed /t/.
Edit: also "leotard".
÷÷÷÷÷÷
Also how about "potash"? I didn't realize it was just pot + ash until adulthood, so I gave it the vowels of potassium. For those with glottal stops and/or flaps, does this word fit that pattern or is the t preserved?

retire [ɹ̱ˁʷiˈtʰaɪ̯ɹ̱ˁ]
autism [ˈɒɾɪzm̩] (this may be in free variation with an untapped variety: [ˈɒˌtʰɪzm̩])
retard [ɹ̱ˁʷɪˈtʰɑɹ̱ˁʔd̚] (verb); [ˈɹ̱ˁʷitʰɑɹ̱ˁʔd̚] (noun)*
leotard [ˈɫiɵtʰɑɹ̱ˁd̚]
potash [ˈpɑʔˌæʃ] (like you I only recently learned that this word is pot-ash, so my pronunciation is still transitioning from [pʰəʊ̯ˈtʰæʃ], hence the unnatural sound)

With the exception of my rather unnatural transitional pronunciation of potash, these fit the pattern because all of these /t/'s are syllable-initial. Autism is something of an exception, but it's also the only word on this list that I use with any frequency. It also precedes a reduced vowel.

*Word final /t/ and /d/ remain distinct for me because /t/ is debuccalized to [ʔ] whereas /d/ receives glottal-fortification and no audible release: [ʔd̚]. They probably sound similar, but there is alveolar contact on word-final /d/ and there is not on word-final /t/.

EDIT: I don't have /au/ in autism.

[Travis B.]

To me it's not just a syllabification thing but a stress thing; /t/ at the beginning of onsets of stressed syllables are aspirated, not glottalized or flapped. I have:

retire: [ʁʷəˈtʰə(ː)e̯ʁ]~[ˌʁʷiˈtʰə(ː)e̯ʁ]
autism: [ˈɒˌtʰɘːzm̩(ː)]
retard: [ʁʷəˈtʰɑːʁt]~[ˌʁʷiˈtʰɑːʁt] (verb), [ˈʁʷiˌtʰɑːʁt] (noun)
leotard: [ˈʟ̞iːɘˌtʰɑːʁt]
potash: [ˈpʰaɾˌɛʃ]

[Vijay]

Some Canadians say læva, I've heard it on YouTube. And mærio, etc.

I know a Canadian who also said Ob[æ]ma while speaking Spanish.

[Zaarin]

To me it's not just a syllabification thing but a stress thing; /t/ at the beginning of onsets of stressed syllables are aspirated, not glottalized or flapped.

It's probably the same with me, which would explain the aspirated/flapped variation in autism, since in careful speech I have secondary stress on the second syllable but in rapid speech I do not.

[Linguoboy]

I got teased last night for my pronunciation of "sorcerer" which is [ˈsɑsəɹɚ].

The [ɑ] is due to the traditional lack of the horse-hoarse merger in St Louis. Then r-dissimilation takes place, deleting the first /r/.

[Travis B.]

I wonder how common unstressed intervocalic /t d n nt nd/ as well as /b v ð/ elision are, because you'd think that they are highly non-standard, yet I practically never encounter native English-speakers here who have a problem with them (as opposed to non-native English-speakers, who are readily confused by them (even though I find they are less confused by /n nt nd/ elision, probably because the remaining vowel nasalization tips them off)).