English questions

[Travis B.]

I originally intended for it to be "Lib--squashed" (i.e., a squashed library) but I missed a hyphen.

Are you sure that it's about libraries? It sounds to me like someone who is politically right-wing talking about "squashing" people whom they see as "libs".

Same here, but we can't come to a solid conclusion because you haven't given us anything to work off of.

[Raphael]

Me? I'm not WarpedWartWars.

[Travis B.]

Me? I'm not WarpedWartWars.

No, I was really replying to WarpedWartWars, not you - I will update my post accordingly.

[WarpedWartWars]

Are you sure that it's about libraries? It sounds to me like someone who is politically right-wing talking about "squashing" people whom they see as "libs".

It is about libraries, (a commit removing libraries, but I use the online editor, so I made it a squashed merge) and I have almost no clue what that's supposed to mean.

[Travis B.]

Are you sure that it's about libraries? It sounds to me like someone who is politically right-wing talking about "squashing" people whom they see as "libs".

It is about libraries, (a commit removing libraries, but I use the online editor, so I made it a squashed merge) and I have almost no clue what that's supposed to mean.

You are asking a specific technical question about the git version control system, not a general linguistic question about the English language. Even I do not know the particular meaning intended here, and I use git and GitHub heavily; I do not think the ZBB is the best place to ask this question.

[WarpedWartWars]

You are asking a specific technical question about the git version control system, not a general linguistic question about the English language. Even I do not know the particular meaning intended here, and I use git and GitHub heavily; I do not think the ZBB is the best place to ask this question.

Yes, but I wanted to know what it would mean in ordinary English.

[Travis B.]

You are asking a specific technical question about the git version control system, not a general linguistic question about the English language. Even I do not know the particular meaning intended here, and I use git and GitHub heavily; I do not think the ZBB is the best place to ask this question.

Yes, but I wanted to know what it would mean in ordinary English.

It has no meaning in "ordinary English"!

[WarpedWartWars]

It has no meaning in "ordinary English"!

Yes, but what would it mean if it did?

[Kuchigakatai]

It has no meaning in "ordinary English"!

Yes, but what would it mean if it did?

The political meaning referred to above, most likely.

[Starbeam]

Trying to parse something about English dialects:

1. How does the NURSE vowel differ from the LETTER vowel, in dialects that have it?
2. Is their a three way distinction of the vowels in BOTHER, THOUGHT, and PALM? Is this consistently maintained, or does one or another vowel (like the one in TRAP) get lost?

Both mostly refer to Australia-New Zealand accents, and ones in England. I'm guess many USA and Canada accents just lack a vowel or two, but i need to make sure i understand the other systems properly.

Yeah, i'm using lexical sets here. Doing multiple dialects of one language doesn't really warrant IPA.

[Kuchigakatai]

Trying to parse something about English dialects:

1. How does the NURSE vowel differ from the LETTER vowel, in dialects that have it?

The NURSE vowel is usually higher in General American, Canadian English and SSBE (Southern Standard British English), effectively [ɵɹ] ([ɵ˞ ]) or [ɵː] (and you can find this kind of description in some phonetic publications, like Ladefoged's phonetics textbook). However, for historical and traditional reasons, the lower symbol "ɜ" is generally preferred, "[ɜ˞ ] ~ [ɜː]".

2. Is their a three way distinction of the vowels in BOTHER, THOUGHT, and PALM? Is this consistently maintained, or does one or another vowel (like the one in TRAP) get lost?

Both mostly refer to Australia-New Zealand accents, and ones in England. I'm guess many USA and Canada accents just lack a vowel or two, but i need to make sure i understand the other systems properly.

I don't know what you mean by "the one in TRAP" getting lost, if that's what you said, but yes, basically much or all of the US and Canada lives with one vowel less or two. How these sets along with LOT and CLOTH are merged varies from place to place.

Curiously, the distinction between FORCE/NORTH versus START survives everywhere.

[Travis B.]

Trying to parse something about English dialects:

1. How does the NURSE vowel differ from the LETTER vowel, in dialects that have it?
2. Is their a three way distinction of the vowels in BOTHER, THOUGHT, and PALM? Is this consistently maintained, or does one or another vowel (like the one in TRAP) get lost?

Both mostly refer to Australia-New Zealand accents, and ones in England. I'm guess many USA and Canada accents just lack a vowel or two, but i need to make sure i understand the other systems properly.

Yeah, i'm using lexical sets here. Doing multiple dialects of one language doesn't really warrant IPA.

I speak an Inland North variety (I know you're asking about AusE and NZE varieties), and my NURSE and LETTER are identical, both being [ʁ̩ˤ]. Strictly speaking I merge LOT and PALM as [a] while keeping THOUGHT separate as [ɒ] or sometimes [ɑ], but some PALM words under the influence of spelling pronunciation have gained pronunciations such as [ɒ ɑ ɒo̯ ɑɤ̯].

[Travis B.]

Trying to parse something about English dialects:

1. How does the NURSE vowel differ from the LETTER vowel, in dialects that have it?

The NURSE vowel is usually higher in General American, Canadian English and SSBE (Southern Standard British English), effectively [ɵɹ] ([ɵ˞ ]) or [ɵː] (and you can find this kind of description in some phonetic publications, like Ladefoged's phonetics textbook). However, for historical and traditional reasons, the lower symbol "ɜ" is generally preferred, "[ɜ˞ ] ~ [ɜː]".

NURSE in EngE and AusE varieties has often seemed to be rounded to me, even though people insist it's unrounded. E.g. In my native dialect [ɜ] is a realization of DRESS (which varies between being an unrounded open-mid central vowel [ɜ] and an unrounded partially centralized open-mid front vowel [ɛ̠]), and it seems distinct from many English and Australian people's NURSE.

[bradrn]

Trying to parse something about English dialects:

1. How does the NURSE vowel differ from the LETTER vowel, in dialects that have it?
2. Is their a three way distinction of the vowels in BOTHER, THOUGHT, and PALM? Is this consistently maintained, or does one or another vowel (like the one in TRAP) get lost?

Both mostly refer to Australia-New Zealand accents, and ones in England. I'm guess many USA and Canada accents just lack a vowel or two, but i need to make sure i understand the other systems properly.

Yeah, i'm using lexical sets here. Doing multiple dialects of one language doesn't really warrant IPA.

For me (Australian English, I think):

1. NURSE is [əː~ɜː]; LETTER is [ɐ].
2. I have a three-way distinction: BOTHER [ɔ~ɒ], THOUGHT [o̞ː], PALM [ɑː].

[Darren]

Trying to parse something about English dialects:

1. How does the NURSE vowel differ from the LETTER vowel, in dialects that have it?
2. Is their a three way distinction of the vowels in BOTHER, THOUGHT, and PALM? Is this consistently maintained, or does one or another vowel (like the one in TRAP) get lost?

Both mostly refer to Australia-New Zealand accents, and ones in England. I'm guess many USA and Canada accents just lack a vowel or two, but i need to make sure i understand the other systems properly.

Yeah, i'm using lexical sets here. Doing multiple dialects of one language doesn't really warrant IPA.

For me, also AusE (South Australia).

The NURSE / LETTER distinction is underlyingly a length distinction /əː ə/, although NURSE tends to be higher and in stronger AusE accents distinctly rounded [ɘː ~ ɵː] as Travis mentioned. LETTER is lower [ɜ] and can border on being [ɐ] especially in Italian/Greek/Mediterranean immigrant ("wog") speech.

BOTHER, THOUGHT, PALM and TRAP are all clearly distinct. BOTHER is [ɔ], THOUGHT is [ʊː] and for me basically indistinguishable in quality from PUT [ʊ]. PALM is [äː] (long equivalent of STRUT [ä]) and TRAP is [æ] or (more so in NZ) [ɛ]. None of them are merged with each other or even close to it, but for me THOUGHT is merged with NORTH, FORCE and CURE*. Notably BOTHER is the only short vowel which doesn't have a long equivalent in my dialect, which has /i iː ʉː ʊ ʊː e eː ə əː ɔ æ æː a aː/.

*For me at least. I suspect other people have a distinction between /ʊː/ and /ʊə̯/, but it's at best pretty subtle.

[anteallach]

Trying to parse something about English dialects:

1. How does the NURSE vowel differ from the LETTER vowel, in dialects that have it?

I think the fundamental point here is that NURSE is part of the unreduced vowel system, whereas LETTER is part of the reduced vowel system and almost always occurs in unstressed syllables. They may or may not have very similar qualities, but NURSE will be longer as you'd expect from an unreduced vowel.

NURSE is often rounded; I think this is especially the case in the southern hemisphere accents, but it is in mine too, and I don't have any influence from AusE or NZE that I'm aware of. Some northern English accents, e.g. Liverpool, have lost the NURSE/SQUARE distinction so that e.g. Blur and Blair are merged.

LETTER at the end of a word can be very open, and sometimes quite back; some regional EngE speech has something which almost sounds like [ɒ] there. (This is not necessarily to do with the historic /r/; it occurs in the COMMA lexical set as well.)

2. Is their a three way distinction of the vowels in BOTHER, THOUGHT, and PALM? Is this consistently maintained, or does one or another vowel (like the one in TRAP) get lost?

As others have said, yes these distinctions are essentially universal in England and in the southern hemisphere accents. Typically THOUGHT and PALM are long vowels whereas LOT and TRAP are short vowels. In some areas they fall into natural long/short pairs (for examples Darren's Australian accent) whereas that's less obvious in typical accents in England where the quality of PALM/START is somewhere in between TRAP, LOT and STRUT and THOUGHT tends to be a bit higher than LOT.

[Starbeam]

Ahh thank yall for answering the questions i had. I was gonna comment sooner, but this computer has a chair about as comfortable as a bicycle seat. Was curious what the fundamental difference between the vowels i brought up was, and i got it answered. Insane there's THREE low vowels in British English (TRAP, LOT, and PALM). What i meant by the TRAP vowel disappearing was it being more and more aligned with PALM, but that's clearly a misconception on my part.

[Travis B.]

Ahh thank yall for answering the questions i had. I was gonna comment sooner, but this computer has a chair about as comfortable as a bicycle seat. Was curious what the fundamental difference between the vowels i brought up was, and i got it answered. Insane there's THREE low vowels in British English (TRAP, LOT, and PALM). What i meant by the TRAP vowel disappearing was it being more and more aligned with PALM, but that's clearly a misconception on my part.

The main dialects in which TRAP and PALM are not distinguished, IIRC, are Scottish English varieties.

[Ryusenshi]

In some accents of Northern England (Manchester, Liverpool, Yorkshire), TRAP and PALM differ only by length: [ä] for TRAP and [äː] for PALM/START.

[Starbeam]

Hmm, so i guess it's roughly two A-type vowels differing in forms of length. Is that a fair assessment?