Zompist Bboard Again

或曰：「以德報怨，何如？」子曰：「何以報德？以直報怨，以德報德。」
Someone said, Repay anger with virtue, how's that? The Master said, How do you repay virtue? Repay anger with uprightness, repay virtue with virtue.

Linguoboy wrote: ↑Tue Mar 05, 2019 10:17 am While lining up for pączki today, a coworker and I shared our love for the ones with apricot filing and I was struck by the difference in our pronunciation. It seems to me that food words in English have a disproportionate number of unpredictable alternations and that--even more interesting--several seem to vary arbitrarily without coinciding with other prominent isoglosses. Some examples:

apricot: /eː/ vs /æ/
salmon: /æ/ vs /æl/ vs /ɑ/
potato, tomato: /eː/ vs /ɑ/
basil: /eː/ vs /æ/

For the helluvit, I've underlined my values. I don't know that I even share them all with other members of my family, let alone with the regiolect of any particular place.

Linguoboy wrote: ↑Tue Mar 05, 2019 10:17 am While lining up for pączki today, a coworker and I shared our love for the ones with apricot filing and I was struck by the difference in our pronunciation. It seems to me that food words in English have a disproportionate number of unpredictable alternations and that--even more interesting--several seem to vary arbitrarily without coinciding with other prominent isoglosses. Some examples:

apricot: /eː/ vs /æ/
salmon: /æ/ vs /æl/ vs /ɑ/
potato, tomato: /eː/ vs /ɑ/
basil: /eː/ vs /æ/

For the helluvit, I've underlined my values. I don't know that I even share them all with other members of my family, let alone with the regiolect of any particular place.

Salmoneus wrote: ↑Tue Mar 05, 2019 2:13 pm Worth pointing out, this is entirely an American dialectical question, so far as I'm aware. Each of these only has one pronunciation in the UK.

Is it to do with America's poverty and cultural backwardness (historically speaking, that is)? These are all non-native words for foodstuffs that would not have been available to many people, particularly poor people in rural areas, early in America's history (although I'd have thought potato cultivation wouldn't have been that late... then again, some areas may not have been suitable for potato growing, so the word and the foodstuff may have been a later reborrowing in those areas once the economy became more interconnected).

Travis B. wrote: ↑Tue Mar 05, 2019 4:16 pmWhen I hear /ˈbæzəl/ I think of the character from Fawlty Towers...

Linguoboy wrote: ↑Tue Mar 05, 2019 10:17 am While lining up for pączki today, a coworker and I shared our love for the ones with apricot filing and I was struck by the difference in our pronunciation. It seems to me that food words in English have a disproportionate number of unpredictable alternations and that--even more interesting--several seem to vary arbitrarily without coinciding with other prominent isoglosses. Some examples:

apricot: /eː/ vs /æ/
salmon: /æ/ vs /æl/ vs /ɑ/
potato, tomato: /eː/ vs /ɑ/
basil: /eː/ vs /æ/

For the helluvit, I've underlined my values. I don't know that I even share them all with other members of my family, let alone with the regiolect of any particular place.

Zaarin wrote: ↑Tue Mar 05, 2019 1:02 pm So I was transcribing an Indian American (actually I suspect Indian Canadian), and I was struck by the variety of ways he produced /v w/ (which he conflated mostly). Most of the time it was [ʋ], which isn't too striking assuming he was a native speaker of Hindi or something similar, but specifically in the word voting it came out as something like [xᵝ] (i.e., a rounded velar fricative with compression) or possibly even [hᵝ]--I honestly wouldn't have known what he was saying without context. Anyone know what's up with that sound?

Nortaneous wrote: ↑Wed Mar 06, 2019 3:26 amInternet mostly turns up /pontʃki/. As for /pun-/, there are some dialects of Polish where ę is lowered to [ã] - maybe there are some where that's part of a chain shift and ą > [ũ]?

edit: Masovian?
> Standard Polish /ɔ̃/ and /ɛ̃/ merged with /u/ and /a/ respectively, in most situations

Travis B. wrote: ↑Wed Mar 06, 2019 11:18 amI am always surprised that Americans preserve the nasal in pączki, since most Americans, including ones of Polish descent, that I have heard pronounce Polish names significantly anglicize them.

Travis B. wrote: ↑Wed Mar 06, 2019 12:19 pmIn a way that is surprising, since it does seem to be common knowledge here that <cz> is pronounced as /tʃ/. Of course, I knew someone growing up who pronounced <cz> in her last name as /ts/.

Vijay wrote: ↑Tue Mar 05, 2019 8:21 pm

Zaarin wrote: ↑Tue Mar 05, 2019 1:02 pm So I was transcribing an Indian American (actually I suspect Indian Canadian), and I was struck by the variety of ways he produced /v w/ (which he conflated mostly). Most of the time it was [ʋ], which isn't too striking assuming he was a native speaker of Hindi or something similar, but specifically in the word voting it came out as something like [xᵝ] (i.e., a rounded velar fricative with compression) or possibly even [hᵝ]--I honestly wouldn't have known what he was saying without context. Anyone know what's up with that sound?

Nope. The fact that they still use [ʋ] is already pretty remarkable (it's actually kind of hard for me to do that when I try to use an Indian accent (and I sometimes have to because I have met a number of Indians who say they can't make head or tail of American accents) to the point where I actually have to force myself to remember Indians do it in certain contexts you might not even expect it in). I don't think I've ever heard anyone born in North America use that sound (but maybe I just didn't notice); it seems like possibly the most obvious sign of an Indian accent after retroflexes and probably one of the first I got rid of when learning to produce an American accent myself. Of course, conflating /v/ and /w/ is pretty typical of Indian accents, though.