English questions

[anteallach]

I bet a lot of people, myself included, couldn't separate a list of words into NORTH-words and FORCE-words even if that was the only way of keeping themselves from being dropped into a pit of snakes.

My only clue would be the spelling. Those silent ⟨e⟩s, and the ⟨oa⟩s in a few, must be doing something. (Assuming FORCE is the originally long one. It might be NORTH – I can never remember)

FORCE is the long one.

The following "rules" obviously assume the vowel is one or the other; obviously they're not intended to apply to flour (or coral, which is LOT for me).
1. If the spelling is ar (generally after w or qu) or aur then it is NORTH.
2. Word-final or is NORTH.
3. If the spelling is oor, oar or our it is FORCE.
4. If the spelling is or before a vowel, including y pronounced as such and silent e, it is FORCE.
5. orC not preceded by a labial (orthographically) is almost always NORTH, except when covered by rule 6. But there are a few exceptions.
6. Where the simple past tense of a verb ends in FORCE by rule 4, and the past participle ends orn(e), it is also FORCE.
7. orC after a labial is complicated. A preceding /p/ seems to particularly encourage FORCE (porch, pork, port, sport), but FORCE also occurs (though certainly not universal; fork and form are NORTH) after /f/ and /v/, and sword is also FORCE.

Caveat: I do seem to have this distinction natively, but some of my formative (that's NORTH, by the way) influences didn't have it, and I'm not sure I picked up the historic distribution entirely reliably, especially as far as those "rule 7" words and the exceptions to "rule 5".

[Travis B.]

The key thing is that most North Americans at least to my knowledge have no idea that anyone makes a distinction between two vowels in these words. (I didn't until I was well into adulthood.)

[anteallach]

The key thing is that most North Americans at least to my knowledge have no idea that anyone makes a distinction between two vowels in these words. (I didn't until I was well into adulthood.)

Isn't that fairly typical for people in general? It's hard to imagine a distinction you don't make, sometimes even if the spelling makes it pretty obvious. Note that it's not uncommon for non-rhotic speakers imitating rhotic accents to put /r/s into THOUGHT words.

[Travis B.]

The key thing is that most North Americans at least to my knowledge have no idea that anyone makes a distinction between two vowels in these words. (I didn't until I was well into adulthood.)

Isn't that fairly typical for people in general? It's hard to imagine a distinction you don't make, sometimes even if the spelling makes it pretty obvious. Note that it's not uncommon for non-rhotic speakers imitating rhotic accents to put /r/s into THOUGHT words.

It depends ─ I went through a phase where I would pronounce [ʍ] in words spelled with ⟨wh-⟩ even though that is not a native distinction in my dialect or, for that matter, in the speech of most GA-speakers my age. I was aware that someone actually pronounced ⟨w-⟩ differently from ⟨wh-⟩. In the case of the NORTH/FORCE distinction, however, I had zero awareness that this distinction existed for anyone.

[Lērisama]

The key thing is that most North Americans at least to my knowledge have no idea that anyone makes a distinction between two vowels in these words. (I didn't until I was well into adulthood.)

Isn't that fairly typical for people in general? It's hard to imagine a distinction you don't make, sometimes even if the spelling makes it pretty obvious. Note that it's not uncommon for non-rhotic speakers imitating rhotic accents to put /r/s into THOUGHT words.

I was also unaware some people distinguish between NORTH and FORCE before I was aware of lexical sets. I also couldn't tell the difference between those two and THOUGHT without thinking of the spelling, or trying to remember how it would be in an American¹ accent. Imitating an American¹ accent, I'd probably say [ɐ̯o̞ɹ̠ːʷ]

¹ A stereotypical British version of one, at least. It is mostly GA, but with differing treatment of what a few medical sets are merged into, and highly exaggerated /ɹ/s

[Travis B.]

highly exaggerated /ɹ/s

The main things you can exaggerate are NURSE and lettER. At least in the dialect here, they are quite soft, almost vowel-like. (Articulation-wise they are similar to normal coda /r/ except they are pronounced more open.)

[Linguoboy]

The key thing is that most North Americans at least to my knowledge have no idea that anyone makes a distinction between two vowels in these words. (I didn't until I was well into adulthood.)

And then a selecti quidem of us grew up in a city with at START-NORTH merger and didn't realise their pronunciation of words like "forest" and "horror" was not GA until high school.

[Travis B.]

The key thing is that most North Americans at least to my knowledge have no idea that anyone makes a distinction between two vowels in these words. (I didn't until I was well into adulthood.)

And then a selecti quidem of us grew up in a city with at START-NORTH merger and didn't realise their pronunciation of words like "forest" and "horror" was not GA until high school.

Apparently many people with the cot-caught merger have little to no awareness that other people have such a distinction, as strange as it may seem to cot-caught-unmerged people like myself.

[anteallach]

The key thing is that most North Americans at least to my knowledge have no idea that anyone makes a distinction between two vowels in these words. (I didn't until I was well into adulthood.)

And then a selecti quidem of us grew up in a city with at START-NORTH merger and didn't realise their pronunciation of words like "forest" and "horror" was not GA until high school.

What do two LOT words have to do with a START-NORTH merger?

[Travis B.]

Speaking of LOT words, I grew up not knowing that sorrow and sorry were supposed to have the same vowel! (In the particular dialect I grew up with sorrow has [ɑː] but sorry has [ɔː]. Note that this is not true of all people here, e.g. my daughter generally has [ɑː] in both words.)

[Travis B.]

Are your guys' English dialects like mine where 'green pepper' exclusively refers to a green bell pepper, while the term 'bell pepper' is practically never used unless one is being a pedant and wants to make clear that, yes, the green pepper is a bell pepper (even though there is no ambiguity, because other green-colored types of peppers such as jalapeños are never called 'green peppers' but rather are referred to by their more specific names, e.g. as 'jalapeños'). (Conversely 'red pepper' does not refer to a red-colored bell pepper by default but rather to a spice made from ground red-colored piquant peppers such as cayenne peppers.)

[Lērisama]

Are your guys' English dialects like mine where 'green pepper' exclusively refers to a green bell pepper, while the term 'bell pepper' is practically never used unless one is being a pedant and wants to make clear that, yes, the green pepper is a bell pepper (even though there is no ambiguity, because other green-colored types of peppers such as jalapeños are never called 'green peppers' but rather are referred to by their more specific names, e.g. as 'jalapeños'). (Conversely 'red pepper' does not refer to a red-colored bell pepper by default but rather to a spice made from ground red-colored piquant peppers such as cayenne peppers.)

In my dialect, both 'green pepper' and 'red pepper' refer exclusively to bell peppers, and 'bell pepper' is only used by pedants. I'm not sure what you're referring to with 'red pepper'.

[anteallach]

Are your guys' English dialects like mine where 'green pepper' exclusively refers to a green bell pepper, while the term 'bell pepper' is practically never used unless one is being a pedant and wants to make clear that, yes, the green pepper is a bell pepper (even though there is no ambiguity, because other green-colored types of peppers such as jalapeños are never called 'green peppers' but rather are referred to by their more specific names, e.g. as 'jalapeños'). (Conversely 'red pepper' does not refer to a red-colored bell pepper by default but rather to a spice made from ground red-colored piquant peppers such as cayenne peppers.)

In my dialect, both 'green pepper' and 'red pepper' refer exclusively to bell peppers, and 'bell pepper' is only used by pedants. I'm not sure what you're referring to with 'red pepper'.

Likewise. Possibly his red pepper is what I know as cayenne pepper, which for me usually refers to a powdered spice.

There's also chilli as a generic term for a hot Capsicum fruit, including jalapeños etc.

[Travis B.]

Are your guys' English dialects like mine where 'green pepper' exclusively refers to a green bell pepper, while the term 'bell pepper' is practically never used unless one is being a pedant and wants to make clear that, yes, the green pepper is a bell pepper (even though there is no ambiguity, because other green-colored types of peppers such as jalapeños are never called 'green peppers' but rather are referred to by their more specific names, e.g. as 'jalapeños'). (Conversely 'red pepper' does not refer to a red-colored bell pepper by default but rather to a spice made from ground red-colored piquant peppers such as cayenne peppers.)

In my dialect, both 'green pepper' and 'red pepper' refer exclusively to bell peppers, and 'bell pepper' is only used by pedants. I'm not sure what you're referring to with 'red pepper'.

Likewise. Possibly his red pepper is what I know as cayenne pepper, which for me usually refers to a powdered spice.

'Red pepper' by itself here refers to the same thing as 'cayenne pepper'; note that if you want to refer to a red-colored bell pepper, you have to qualify it so it is a count rather than mass noun (e.g. 'a red pepper', 'red peppers').

There's also chilli as a generic term for a hot Capsicum fruit, including jalapeños etc.

To me 'chili' is chili con carne, and if you want to use it to refer to hot capiscum fruit you have to use it in the plural as 'chilies'.

[anteallach]

In my dialect, both 'green pepper' and 'red pepper' refer exclusively to bell peppers, and 'bell pepper' is only used by pedants. I'm not sure what you're referring to with 'red pepper'.

Likewise. Possibly his red pepper is what I know as cayenne pepper, which for me usually refers to a powdered spice.

'Red pepper' by itself here refers to the same thing as 'cayenne pepper'; note that if you want to refer to a red-colored bell pepper, you have to qualify it so it is a count rather than mass noun (e.g. 'a red pepper', 'red peppers').

There's also chilli as a generic term for a hot Capsicum fruit, including jalapeños etc.

To me 'chili' is chili con carne, and if you want to use it to refer to hot capiscum fruit you have to use it in the plural as 'chilies'.

It can mean chilli con carne here as well, but that would more often be a mass noun whereas chilli for hot capsicum fruit is a count noun.

"I put three chillis in the chilli" is not in fact a ridiculous sentence.

[Travis B.]

Likewise. Possibly his red pepper is what I know as cayenne pepper, which for me usually refers to a powdered spice.

'Red pepper' by itself here refers to the same thing as 'cayenne pepper'; note that if you want to refer to a red-colored bell pepper, you have to qualify it so it is a count rather than mass noun (e.g. 'a red pepper', 'red peppers').

There's also chilli as a generic term for a hot Capsicum fruit, including jalapeños etc.

To me 'chili' is chili con carne, and if you want to use it to refer to hot capiscum fruit you have to use it in the plural as 'chilies'.

It can mean chilli con carne here as well, but that would more often be a mass noun whereas chilli for hot capsicum fruit is a count noun.

"I put three chillis in the chilli" is not in fact a ridiculous sentence.

One thing I should note is that to me referring to a single red bell pepper as 'a red pepper' is perfectly cromulent, whereas referring to a hot Capiscum fruit as 'a chili' sounds a bit... off. If someone referred to 'a chili' without context I would normally assume they referred to a type (edit: or a bowl) of chili con carne. (The normal way to refer to a single hot Capiscum fruit here in a generic fashion is as 'a pepper'.)

[salem]

Are your guys' English dialects like mine where 'green pepper' exclusively refers to a green bell pepper, while the term 'bell pepper' is practically never used unless one is being a pedant and wants to make clear that, yes, the green pepper is a bell pepper (even though there is no ambiguity, because other green-colored types of peppers such as jalapeños are never called 'green peppers' but rather are referred to by their more specific names, e.g. as 'jalapeños'). (Conversely 'red pepper' does not refer to a red-colored bell pepper by default but rather to a spice made from ground red-colored piquant peppers such as cayenne peppers.)

It's always been "green bell pepper", "red bell pepper" and so on to me, ever since I accompanied my parents on grocery trips as a kid. And back then my family hardly ever cooked with any other peppers, so it had no disambiguating function. We did use chili powder of course, but that's a blend of some kind of capsicum usually with other spices – the bag of Penzeys chili powder I've been working through since I visited my parents last year is made from ancho chilis with Mexican oregano, garlic powder, and cumin, for instance. Since I've grown up and watched a significant amount of cooking Youtube, I've become a lot more culinarily adventurous and it's become pretty natural to refer to hot peppers as "chilis"; cayenne powder is cayenne, and bell peppers remain bell peppers.

(I happen to also be from the Milwaukee area, if that's relevant. This means that the stew I know as "chili" bears more resemblance to pasta fazool than to chili con carne.)

[bradrn]

For me, ‘red pepper’ and ‘green pepper’ (and ‘yellow pepper’) are all kinds of bell peppers — though we never call them that, we call them ‘capsicum’. Long, spicy peppers are always ‘chili’. The word ‘pepper’ on its own is ambiguous between capsicums, chilis and peppercorns. I don’t know what ‘chili con carne’ is.

[salem]

I don’t know what ‘chili con carne’ is.

Tex-Mex stew traditionally of just beef, chilis, and tomatoes; within Texas itself there is fierce debate over whether including kidney beans is appropriate, while up north there's usually also macaroni involved.

[Travis B.]

I don’t know what ‘chili con carne’ is.

Tex-Mex stew traditionally of just beef, chilis, and tomatoes; within Texas itself there is fierce debate over whether including kidney beans is appropriate, while up north there's usually also macaroni involved.

The kind I am used to has kidney beans but no macaroni.