On 8/21/07, ed_shapard <ed_shapard@...> wrote:
> This wasn't a rule that I came up with upon reflecting on the way I
> speak. I spelled a whole lot of words with AH+Loll and On+Loll, but
> every time I looked them up in a dictionary, the phonetic spelling
> always had the AWE+Loll combination. After being sceptical myself, it
> occured to me that the Loll sound changes the sound of AH and On
> whenever it is merged with them. I think it changes both AH and On
> into AWE; perhaps different shades of the AWE sound, but AWE
> nonetheless. And if we accept that it does, then AH+Loll and On+Loll
> not only don't exist, but can't exist!
>
> Let me know if you can find a dictionary that says otherwise.
AHD4 says otherwise, for one. See, for example,
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=loll (search for "American
Heritage Dictionary"), which has the word "loll" spelled with On+Loll.
Also, "Baal" has one pronunciation with Ah+Loll according to AHD4 --
though admittedly, that's a loanword.
Some other examples I tried to come up with that might have On+Loll
turned out to have Oak+Loll instead (so my pronunciation there is
apparently non-standard), but I wouldn't call Ah+Loll or On+Loll
impossible combinations in AHD4 English, though they seem to be rare.
(I like AHD4 in connection with Shavian because the pronunciation it
uses is fairly close to what was used as the basis of Shavian.)
> In my
> opinion, all three combinations are so similar that a hypothetical
> reader would pronounce them "correctly" for whatever word they're in
> no matter which one you use; and he wouldn't have to think about it
> either.
I find that "Baal" and "ball" sound very different, and I'd have to
stop and think.
Perhaps it's different for people who merge "short o" and "ah" (for
whom "father" and "bother" rhyme, for example).
> And since all the dictionary's I've seen use the AWE+Loll
> combination, I'd say that's the safe bet.
That's true.
> Incidentally, I didn't agree with everything the dictionaries say.
> They all seem to spell the -ing sound as If+huNG, whereas I think
> words such as sing, thing, and bling are definitely EAt+huNG (at least
> in my dialect).
For me, the vowel before huNG also sounds different, but I think this
is allophony. I have three different vowels in "sin, sing, seen", for
example, so the "sing" vowel is not the same as the "sin" vowel but
not the same as the "seen" vowel, either. Which one it's an allophone
of is not immediately clear, but I treat it as If rather than as EAt
-- there is a predictable sound change when If comes before huNG.
Incidentally, I also have such an in-between vowel at the end of words
such as "city, gladly", etc. which I also now treat as If.
I suppose treating those two consistently as allophones of the EAt
phoneme, rather than as allophones of the If phoneme, could also work.
(Though especially for the final vowel situation, I believe that
traditional RP uses a clear If vowel, so it probably makes more sense
to analyse it as If.)
Cheers,
--
Philip Newton <philip.newton@...>