How Should We Handle Words That Are Bad In *Some* Languages?

[anteallach]

What impression do you get from the recordings of TRAP and STRUT (and others, perhaps) in Geoff Lindsey's posts
https://www.englishspeechservices.com/b ... sh-vowels/
and
https://www.englishspeechservices.com/b ... r-dummies/

The vowel in "Kant" is closer to some of the STRUT recordings than to any of the TRAP recordings, IMO, though many of those are very hard to tell apart for me.

I definitely agree. It is also different from the BATH vowel. It might be important to note that I am from Northern Germany and there is no systematic contrast for me between short /a/ and the unstressed vocalized R/a-schwa /ɐ/ in Arbeiter.

Well, yes I think that dialectal variation in both languages is playing a role here. But I also think that there is a fairly strong tendency for standardish BrE speakers to perceive standardish German /a/ as like TRAP, while standardish German speakers perceive STRUT as closer. So Germans (as in this thread) think there's a potential problem with "Kant", but English speakers (including, for the most part, Americans, though they'll often go with LOT rather than TRAP) don't hear one.

I don't think length is the issue; if that were the case it would get anglicised with PALM, but the usual BrE pronunciation is with TRAP.

[Torco]

the pajero was sold here as montero. the laputa i don't remember but i'm sure they changed it to something. tbh that's what concessionaries are for, they'll tell you "yo, that shipment of mitsubishi shitfarts? yeah, great car, can you change the nametag please? I don't, know, what about shazzam or something" it barely registered here as a funny thing.

i did laugh when I first saw a properly labeled pajero, in the south of morocco.

[Richard W]

My STRUT vowel is [ɐ]. TRAP is between [æ] and [a]. However, my school was on the edge of the region where STRUT had the same vowel as put and push, so some of the people studying physics had inescapable great hilarity at Kundt's apparatus.

I think Raphael should have more concern with the line in the Philosophers' Song.

[Travis B.]

As a native German speaker, German /a/ is very central and perceptually close to AE and BR STRUT for me. German /a/ sounds very different from both PALM and TRAP in either AE or BE. I couldn't reliably distinguish German Kant and the c-word.

In the dialect here in southeastern Wisconsin, LOT/PALM is essentially identical to German [a] while STRUT is essentially German [ɔ] but unrounded.

[Creyeditor]

Now I'm wondering what German /a:/ sounds like to Engkish ears. More like PALM or TRAP? Some Germans claim it's identical to PALM but that is improbable if /a/ is already similar to PALM.

[hwhatting]

Now I'm wondering what German /a:/ sounds like to Engkish ears. More like PALM or TRAP? Some Germans claim it's identical to PALM but that is improbable if /a/ is already similar to PALM.

To my native ears, there's no big difference in quality between /a/ and /a:/, so British PALM is closest to both (closer than HUT or TRAP are). HUT also gets mapped to /a/ in German, simply because there's nothing else nearer in German, while TRAP normally gets mapped to /e/ ([ε], short "e" or "ä" in writing).

[Creyeditor]

There are native speakers that report a quality difference, with the long vowel being further back than the short one. I don't hear it.

[Travis B.]

Now I'm wondering what German /a:/ sounds like to Engkish ears. More like PALM or TRAP? Some Germans claim it's identical to PALM but that is improbable if /a/ is already similar to PALM.

To me I have a hard time keeping German /a/ and /a:/ apart; they both sound like LOT/PALM to me.

[anteallach]

Now I'm wondering what German /a:/ sounds like to Engkish ears. More like PALM or TRAP? Some Germans claim it's identical to PALM but that is improbable if /a/ is already similar to PALM.

To my (northern) BrE ears, German /a/ maps to TRAP, /a:/ to PALM, though I don't think it's as far back as RP PALM.

[hwhatting]

There are native speakers that report a quality difference, with the long vowel being further back than the short one. I don't hear it.

There is a slight difference in quality but not enough to affect the mapping of English /a/ sounds. From a German language point of view, the important feature is the length distinction and therefore many German speakers don't even notice the quality distinction. I only noticed it when I started to learn Dutch, because there, the quality of short and long /a/ is switched around compared to German (that's also one of the features of the typical accent of Dutch people speaking German).

[Raphael]

I had electronic classes in high school. As it happens 'bit' sound just like the French word for 'dick'. You can imagine just how that went with teenagers.

Kinda puts Bitcoin into a whole new light!

[Linguoboy]

Now I'm wondering what German /a:/ sounds like to Engkish ears. More like PALM or TRAP? Some Germans claim it's identical to PALM but that is improbable if /a/ is already similar to PALM.

It depends whether a northern German is speaking or a southern German/Austrian/Swiss German.

[zompist]

I had electronic classes in high school. As it happens 'bit' sound just like the French word for 'dick'. You can imagine just how that went with teenagers.

Hold on... do you mean that Fr. bite sounds like English bit, with laxed [ɪ]? Or like French bit, with [i]?

(I would have expected the latter, since so far as I know French has no [ɪ] sound.)

[Travis B.]

I had electronic classes in high school. As it happens 'bit' sound just like the French word for 'dick'. You can imagine just how that went with teenagers.

Hold on... do you mean that Fr. bite sounds like English bit, with laxed [ɪ]? Or like French bit, with [i]?

(I would have expected the latter, since so far as I know French has no [ɪ] sound.)

But do French-speakers render English bit loaned into French with [ɪ] or with [i]?

[zompist]

I had electronic classes in high school. As it happens 'bit' sound just like the French word for 'dick'. You can imagine just how that went with teenagers.

Hold on... do you mean that Fr. bite sounds like English bit, with laxed [ɪ]? Or like French bit, with [i]?

(I would have expected the latter, since so far as I know French has no [ɪ] sound.)

But do French-speakers render English bit loaned into French with [ɪ] or with [i]?

That's what I meant by French bit, which my dictionary has as [bit]. People don't usually borrow phonemes, and usually feel weird about pronouncing borrowings exactly as in the source language.

[Rounin Ryuuji]

Assuming the bit in question is the unit of information storage, then they missed out on the chance to translate the pun with morceau and morsure.

[Raphael]

People don't usually borrow phonemes, and usually feel weird about pronouncing borrowings exactly as in the source language.

In German, there's a weird norm under which some acronyms taken from English are always or almost always pronounced as if they were German acronyms (CD, DVD, PC, USA, NASA*), while others are always or almost always pronounced the English way (CIA, FBI, NSA), with no apparent rule about when to do what. (OK, wait, apparently, if it's a US or UK intelligence agency, it's pronounced the English way, while if it isn't, it's probably pronounced as if it were a German acronym.)

*"NASA" isn't treated as an acronym at all for pronunciation purposes.

[Rounin Ryuuji]

I don't know of anybody who says NASA (in English) as anything other than ['næ.sə], or the appropriate dialectal equivalent.

[vlad]

Now I'm wondering what German /a:/ sounds like to Engkish ears. More like PALM or TRAP? Some Germans claim it's identical to PALM but that is improbable if /a/ is already similar to PALM.

Australian English has a four-way contrast between /æ æː a aː/. German short /a/ usually sounds like Australian /a/ (STRUT), but occasionally sounds like Australian /æ/ (TRAP), and I've heard both variants from the same speaker. German long /aː/ always sounds like Australian /aː/ (PALM), and never like /æː/.

I've never heard anything in any kind of German that sounds like Australian /æː/. I tried listening to some Swiss German but in the examples I found short ä and long ä sound like /æ aː/, rather than /æ æː/. (E.g. the beginning of this song has d Summeräbe, which sounds to me like [tsʊmːəɾaːbə].)

[Travis B.]

I don't know of anybody who says NASA (in English) as anything other than ['næ.sə], or the appropriate dialectal equivalent.

Same here; NASA is always /ˈnæsə/ in English as far as I am aware. (I have [ˈnɛsə(ː)] personally, which maps directly to such.)