Phonemically weird words

[Travis B.]

Ugh. I can understand it if the form of a language taught to speakers of other languages is more formal than the spoken version, but written, formal German has long and short vowels, too!

As a North American English-speaker, vowel tenseness is much more salient than vowel length, even though NAE itself does have vowel length in many varieties - except that NAE-speakers perceive vowel length as a property of following consonants rather than of vowels themselves.

[Kuchigakatai]

[ɪ]

Though I guess Birne is pronounced [bɪɐnə] (never heard anything but [ɐ] for German r in that position).

Ah the challenges of learning German... I had to wait until I started regularly travelling to Germany to figure out that German has long and short vowels, and that no one will understand what you say if you mix those up. I took 8 years of German classes, you'd thing one of my teachers would have mentioned that at some point.

I also figured out the ʁ ~ ɐ allophony the hard way (Just as annoying, at least for a French native speaker: people won't notice you're getting it wrong, but you won't understand a thing...)

(On a positive note, it was conlanging that helped me figure out what was going on.)

I similarly like to rant about how, in about six years of English classes, at a school where nothing was taught but English as Foreign Language, no one could ever tell me that English is supposed to have very different sounds from those of Spanish overall.

A few things were obvious to me from the start, like the aspiration of /p t k/ (but not /tʃ/ [tʃʰ]), the nature of /ɹ/, and the very distinct sound [ɵ˞] of the NURSE lexical set (traditionally transcribed "/ɜː ɜ˞/", but actually [ɵː] in the UK and [ɵ˞] in the US). But I remember that in my fourth year I noticed some of my classmates pronounced "the" as Spanish /de/ and others as /da/, and when asked my current teacher at that time whether it was pronounced as (Spanish) /de/ or /da/, she gave me some non-sensical answer like "it's pronounced [ðə]", without any further comment. I didn't pursue it anymore. I'm annoyed because a mere off-comment like "English has different sounds, the vowel doesn't exist in Spanish" would've been enough.

It wasn't until I started participating in online forums like this one, a good seven years after I had started learning English, that while discussing linguistics and conlanging I finally learned English has a fine-grained vowel system with important differences between /i ɪ/, and /ʉ ʊ/, and /ɑ ɐ/ (and in many dialects /ɔ/). All that time I had been living in the LIE of pronouncing them /i/, /u/ and /o/.

(I think I need to clarify that I did not grow up in Canada, but rather moved here by the end of my teenage years. Having participated in online forums like this one for a couple years before that move eventually turned out to be immensely helpful.)

(To this day, of course, I can't fully distinguish North American /ʉ ʊ/ and /ɑ ɐ/ when I listen to spontaneous speech, even though I think I tend to do an alright job at saying them, but this is a different matter as it has to do with being a non-native speaker. My brain just perceives them as Spanish /u/ and /o/, even though I know they're four different vowels. I'm not any different from English speakers who eternally struggle learning to distinguish ¡Tenlo! 'Hold (sg.) it!, Tiens-le' vs. ¡Denlo! 'Give (pl.) it!, Donnez-le' in spontaneous Spanish. I can perfectly distinguish the four-five vowels in isolation though, say, if you pronounce "look Luke" and "not nut (nought)" next to each other)

[Travis B.]

the very distinct sound [ɵ˞] of the NURSE lexical set (traditionally transcribed "/ɜː ɜ˞/", but actually [ɵː] in the UK and [ɵ˞] in the US).

This has been something that has always gotten me about traditional descriptions of (non-rhotic) EngE - the NURSE vowel to me sounds clearly rounded, yet I never see it transcribed this way in writing.

[KathTheDragon]

It isn't rounded for me, unless every single /ə/ is rounded too: my NURSE vowel is straightforwardly /əː/

[Ares Land]

English learning isn't much better - the traditional way to learn about English lax vowels is to fall into the bitch/beach trap.

Ugh. I can understand it if the form of a language taught to speakers of other languages is more formal than the spoken version, but written, formal German has long and short vowels, too!

No, I think the idea is that you're supposed to pick up pronunciation as you go. And it will work... as long as you have a lot of native speakers around.

[Linguoboy]

Ah the challenges of learning German... I had to wait until I started regularly travelling to Germany to figure out that German has long and short vowels, and that no one will understand what you say if you mix those up. I took 8 years of German classes, you'd thing one of my teachers would have mentioned that at some point.

Ugh. I can understand it if the form of a language taught to speakers of other languages is more formal than the spoken version, but written, formal German has long and short vowels, too!

I didn't have serious issues with the tense/long vs law/short distinctions of German because they mirror those in my native language. But I think I'd been studying it for about ten years before I became aware that it also has tense/short vowels. No German textbook I've seen pitched at English-speaking learners talks about those.

[Travis B.]

Ah the challenges of learning German... I had to wait until I started regularly travelling to Germany to figure out that German has long and short vowels, and that no one will understand what you say if you mix those up. I took 8 years of German classes, you'd thing one of my teachers would have mentioned that at some point.

Ugh. I can understand it if the form of a language taught to speakers of other languages is more formal than the spoken version, but written, formal German has long and short vowels, too!

I didn't have serious issues with the tense/long vs law/short distinctions of German because they mirror those in my native language. But I think I'd been studying it for about ten years before I became aware that it also has tense/short vowels. No German textbook I've seen pitched at English-speaking learners talks about those.

I always identified tense/long vowels with my tense vowels and lax/short vowels with my lax vowels. But I likewise have very rarely come across mention of its tense/short vowels, to the point as if they did not exist, and for a long time did not know that they even existed.

[anteallach]

It isn't rounded for me, unless every single /ə/ is rounded too: my NURSE vowel is straightforwardly /əː/

Mine is (weakly) rounded, on the way to [œː], but I can make an unrounded vowel which sounds like an unremarkable NURSE vowel.

[quinterbeck]

It isn't rounded for me, unless every single /ə/ is rounded too: my NURSE vowel is straightforwardly /əː/

Mine is (weakly) rounded, on the way to [œː], but I can make an unrounded vowel which sounds like an unremarkable NURSE vowel.

Isn't the rounding distinction somewhat neutralised in the centre of the mouth? Acoustically, there's less distinction between [ə] and [ɵ] than between [i] and [y]. It'd be reasonable to expect a lot of variability

[sasasha]

I think so variable that it's a bit redundant to claim that the NURSE vowel is "actually [ɵː] in the UK".

There's enough variation on my own street in the precise quality of this vowel, let alone the whole country. Granted I'm in the West Midlands, where this vowel is often extremely rounded.

I've always accepted [ɜː] as a kind of compromise. For me there is a slight qualitative difference between it and my [ə], and though there's a slight rounding, there is too with my [ə].

[aporaporimos]

My dialect has a merger of original /ʌl/, /ʊl/, /oʊl/ to something like [oɫ], which I think of as /ʊl/, but a few words maintain a distinct /ʌl/—the ones I can think of are insult, result, adult, and ultimate. In every other word ending in -ult it's pronounced as /ʊlt/. The /ʌl/ in those words that have it sounds really similar to /ɑl/; I can barely distinguish the second syllable of insult from salt. Of course, this makes phonetic sense, but in other contexts /ʌ/ and /ɑ/ sound categorically different, as phonemes are supposed to. (I should note I have the cot-caught merger as well, since salt is apparently /sɔlt/ for those who don't.)

[Travis B.]

I've always accepted [ɜː] as a kind of compromise. For me there is a slight qualitative difference between it and my [ə], and though there's a slight rounding, there is too with my [ə].

I'm not sure about that, as I natively have [ɜ] for my DRESS vowel, which is distinct from the NURSE vowel I hear from EngE speakers on British TV, whereas I can produce a vowel that approximates the EngE NURSE vowel I hear if I take my DRESS vowel, raise it slightly, and make it slightly rounded.

[Hominid]

Not a word I use regularly, but apparently "nihonium" is supposed to be pronounced /nɪˈhoʊ.ni.əm/. Are there any other English words with [ɪ] directly followed by [h]?

[missals]

I'm not sure, but I think that's less about the fact that [ɪh] in particular is rare and more about the fact that intervocalic [h] is fairly uncommon in English.

[Hominid]

I'm not sure, but I think that's less about the fact that [ɪh] in particular is rare and more about the fact that intervocalic [h] is fairly uncommon in English.

In general I think the rule (which is broken by nihonium) is that a vowel can precede [h] only if it can occur word-finally. Similarly I don't think there are any words with [ɛh] or [ʊh].

[Pabappa]

There's floccinaucinihilipilification, which has /ɪh/ in one of its two listed pronunciations. I dont really consider it a proper word, and shorter words like "nihilification" aren't in use. I pronounce ex nihilo with /ɪh/, but Wiktionary doesnt list that pronunciation at https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ex_nihilo .

[Richard W]

There's floccinaucinihilipilification, which has /ɪh/ in one of its two listed pronunciations. I dont really consider it a proper word, and shorter words like "nihilification" aren't in use. I pronounce ex nihilo with /ɪh/, but Wiktionary doesnt list that pronunciation at https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ex_nihilo .

The related word nihilism is there, but i pronounce it with three feet, because of the rule that /h/ can only start stressed or initial syllables.

[KathTheDragon]

You pronounce the h in "nihilism"? It's /ˈnɐɪ.əˌlɪzm̩/ for me.

[quinterbeck]

Not a word I use regularly, but apparently "nihonium" is supposed to be pronounced /nɪˈhoʊ.ni.əm/. Are there any other English words with [ɪ] directly followed by [h]?

I think I would naturalise the pronunciation as [nə.həʊ.ni.əm]

I'm trying to think of morphemes that contain non-initial h, and so far I have only ahoy, ahead, cahoots - I have a feeling there won't be many (even ahead is historically a result of affixing a- to head).

[aporaporimos]

I don't think /nɪˈhoʊ.ni.əm/ is a valid pronunciation for me; if I say it a couple times it turns into [nɛ-] right away, which is probably underlying /nə-/. Since it's a recently coined international word I imagine the dictionary pronunciation is based directly on the spelling.

I pronounce nihilism as /ˈnai.ə.lɪz.m/ which I believe to be the standard pronunciation, though dictionaries list others: M-W allows /niː-/ as well as the presence of /h/, giving 4 total possibilities. If I heard someone say /ˈnɪ.hɪl.ɪz.m/ I would suspect they hadn't heard the word out loud before.