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In the Midwestern United States, they are "news" /nooz/,
"hews" /hyooz/, "whose" /hooz/.


----- Original Message -----
From: Yahya
To: shawalphabet@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Saturday, March 14, 2009 9:18 AM
Subject: [shawalphabet] Re: keyword pronunciation


Hi Paul (Pa.ul?)

I must respectfully disagree about these words using
"the plain old aspiration (h-sound)". Yes, aspiration
is important in those words you cite; but so is rounding.

For me, How is /hau/ - with no wh-sound involved. But
Who, Whom, Whose, Whole, and Whore all require *both*
aspiration and rounding. Whole/Hole is a minimal pair
for the wh/h contrast; Whore/Hoar is another.

If you pronounce "news" as we do in Australia: /nyooz/,
then presumably you also pronounce "hues" similarly,
in fact identically with "hews": /hyooz/. But if you
don't have the 'y' before the 'oo' in these words -
which seems to me to be the commoner North American
pattern for "news" - then these words would be /nooz/
and /hooz/, right? (Maybe not "hews".) Do Americans
who say "Noo York" pronounce "whose" in exactly the same
way as "hues"?

Regards,
Yahya

--- In shawalphabet@yahoogroups.com, paul vandenbrink wrote:
[...]
> Anyway, Aspiration is important in words such as How, Who, Whom, Whose, whole, whore, etc. which are pronounced with the plain old aspiration (h-sound), rather than the original hw-sound commonly written as wh in the Roman Alphabet.
> Regards, Paul V.
> ______________________attached__________________________
>
> --- In shawalphabet@yahoogroups.com, "Yahya" <yahya@> wrote:
> >
> > --- In shawalphabet@yahoogroups.com, David Sheppard wrote:
> > [...]
> > > Well, while the following vowel may determine the rounding necessary to properly pronounce the word "who" or "hoot", a simple check in the mirror reveals that to pronounce any of the /hw-/ words also requires a preliminary pursing of the lips into a small /o/ in order to produce the aspiration. "Whee" and other similar words do it appears begin with a small degree of rounding.
> >
> > Exactly!
> >
> > > Though the expenditure of energy required is minuscule, the Principle of Least Effort works towards simplification,
> >
> > Laziness is a principle?! ;-)
> >
> > > which perhaps may explain why so many people no longer aspirate these words today.
>

2009/3/14 Yahya <yahya@...>:
> If you pronounce "news" as we do in Australia: /nyooz/,
> then presumably you also pronounce "hues" similarly,
> in fact identically with "hews": /hyooz/.  But if you
> don't have the 'y' before the 'oo' in these words -
> which seems to me to be the commoner North American
> pattern for "news" - then these words would be /nooz/
> and /hooz/, right?

No; as I understand it, North American only drops the yod after
coronals (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coronal_consonant).

So, "soot" (of clothes), "nooz", "dooty", "Toozday", "lood" (behaviour).

(But "Matthew" and not "Mathoo".)

Cheers,
--
Philip Newton <philip.newton@gmail.com>

Paul wrote:



> Woo seems to be the pure voiced w sound. You can keep your

> mouth in 1 position and keep pushing the "woo" out. I also notice

> some lip vibration from the rounding when I extend this sound.



I believe the vibration is in the throat, where voicing is done. Hum and
you can feel it.



> Regards, Paul V.



> P.S. Unfortunatly I pronounce "whew" as a kind of a long drawn out

> half whistle. Certain sound's like the Rasberry, Tsk Tsk, whew and
> Shoosh, we don't really have letters for. ...



Well, so do I, as a sort of whisper--which means that whew and woo may

not really be a minimal pair after all.



> I think those kinds of words are called onomatopoeia, which I don't know

> how to pronounce.



oh-no-mut-oh-PEE-yuh, and --PEE-ik for the adjectival form. The penultimate

stress reveals it to be of classical derivation, in this case Greek. Not a word

however to be used in casual conversation lest you be thought somewhat odd.



This information courtesy of my local library. While there I thought to look up

the word 'who' (which has five-and-a-half columns in the OED) to see if it

had ever been pronounced with an initial /hw/. Indeed it had. Although there

were several local variations, the most important appears to have been 'hwa'

(to rhyme with bah) a thousand years or so ago. Three-hundred years later,

after (or during) the Norman period, the vowel became first /awe/, later still

/oh/, and finally /ooh/ at some time during the Middle English period. The

spelling /wh/ was an invention of the Norman scribes who attempted to instil

some order into Anglo-Saxon by creating the forms /ch, sh, th, wh/ for those

sounds that did not occur in Norman French; for example as in the words
'child, shall, thought, while'.


Unfortunately there was no indication given as to when the /hw/ of 'who' was

reduced to /h/ -- at least my hasty perusal did not find it. I have also read

somewhere that had (British) English been allowed to follow its own internal

logic then the standard pronunciation today would have been 'oo', another

example of the Principle of Least Effort (unconsciously) at work. However,

aitch-dropping was noticed, and h-retention became an important social

indicator. In the language-form that eventually became known as Received

Pronunciation two important markers are the required presence of initial

/h/ and the absence of post-vocalic /r/. Recently I watched a interesting
television presentation by the historian Simon Schama and noticed during
the course of his discussion that his aitches were very forceful; I wonder if
he over-compensates.



I must also report that in a recent news-conference President Obama

pronounced 'wheel' as 'weal', but it was in the middle of the sentence,

and unstressed. There is a wonderful example of this stressed/unstressed

variation that can occur in the Appalachian Mountains (I have heard it

myself) in the local pronunciation of the pronoun 'it', which can become

/hit/ when stressed, as in "hit's a fine day, ain't it?". This would appear to
be a hold-over from the Anglo-Saxon pronoun trio 'he (pronounced 'hey'),

heo, hit' for 'he, she, it' (how 'heo' became 'she' is something of a

mystery, at least to me!)



And now, a treat for you: TheWorld.org has an interesting discussion of

Canadian spelling at http://theworld.org/language (about halfway through

the sound file) with an interview of someone named Joe Clark, who has

written an e-book entitled 'Organizing Our Marvellous Neighbours: How
to Feel Good About Canadian English', which you can also read about at

http://en-ca.org/



Sounds like it would be a good compromise to me,

dshep

Hi Philip
Thanks for the information. I always wondered if there was any reason why some words using the "eu" or "ew" digraph had become pronounced "oo"
or "yoo" instead of the rather interesting, but somewhat rare "eu" vowel Dipthong. Some Phonetic dictionaries, prefer not to deal with it, at all. For example, NTC's Dictionary of American English Pronunciation, writes it as "ju".

I figured that it became "yoo" in the beginning of syllable or word,
and "oo" or "ew" at the end of the syllable. It is rare in the middle of syllable. The only example, I can think of are "cute" "feud" and "Butte, Montana".
Thanks for clarifying a confusing situation in English Spelling.
Regards, Paul V.

p.s. Despite pleas from the European Central Bank to stick to the official "euro" name, Latvia prefers to call the currency the "eiro" instead.
This is because euro is a non-existent word in Latvian.
"The 'eu' dipthong is alien to the Latvian language," says Latvia's education minister Ina Druviete.
National pride is also behind the country's refusal to budge on the matter.
Latvia has fought to re-establish its linguistic identity after the end of the Soviet occupation during which the Russian language was forced upon its citizens.
Latvian is now spoken by around two-thirds of the population of 2.3 million and is the official state language.
Eiro is a part of the Latvian word for Europe, or Eiropa, so its claims for linguistic independence were justified, Latvia's language commission said.
___________________________attached_____________________
--- In shawalphabet@yahoogroups.com, Philip Newton <philip.newton@...> wrote:
>
> 2009/3/14 Yahya <yahya@...>:
> > If you pronounce "news" as we do in Australia: /nyooz/,
> > then presumably you also pronounce "hues" similarly,
> > in fact identically with "hews": /hyooz/.  But if you
> > don't have the 'y' before the 'oo' in these words -
> > which seems to me to be the commoner North American
> > pattern for "news" - then these words would be /nooz/
> > and /hooz/, right?
>
> No; as I understand it, North American only drops the yod after
> coronals (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coronal_consonant).
>
> So, "soot" (of clothes), "nooz", "dooty", "Toozday", "lood" (behaviour).
>
> (But "Matthew" and not "Mathoo".)
>
> Cheers,
> --
> Philip Newton <philip.newton@...>
>

Hi Philip
Thanks again for clarifying a few issues. Especially
oh-no-mut-oh-PEE-yuh. The penultimate
stress reveals it to be of classical derivation,
in this case Greek. Not a word however to be used in casual conversation, lest you be thought somewhat odd.

It just goes to prove that the Greeks did indeed have a word for
everything. Is there a better English synonym, I could use?

Also, We need a way of indicating that a English word is
Onomatopoeiac when writing it in Shavian Letters, so as
to indicate that the Shavian
spelling is only a rough approximation of the real sound.
This is less of a problem in Roman spelling, where the majority of the spellings only provide a rough description of the pronounciation
in any case.

Regards, Paul V.

P.S. Philip, I am mildly surprised, given that you are a strong proponent of the Shavian Alphabet, that you concern yourself about only being thought some what odd.
It is a risky and arduous undertaking to introduce a new way of doing things. There is a famous quote from Niccolo Machiavelli of Florence, which says it much better. He ought to know.
__________________attached_____________________________

--- In shawalphabet@yahoogroups.com, dshep <dshepx@...> wrote:
> > P.S. Unfortunatly I pronounce "whew" as a kind of a long drawn out half whistle. Certain sound's like the Rasberry, Tsk Tsk, whew and Shoosh, we don't really have letters for. ...
> Well, so do I, as a sort of whisper--which means that whew and woo may not really be a minimal pair after all.
> > I think those kinds of words are called onomatopoeia, which I don't know how to pronounce.

> This information courtesy of my local library. While there I thought to look up
>
> the word 'who' (which has five-and-a-half columns in the OED) to see if it
>
> had ever been pronounced with an initial /hw/. Indeed it had. Although there
>
> were several local variations, the most important appears to have been 'hwa'
>
> (to rhyme with bah) a thousand years or so ago. Three-hundred years later,
>
> after (or during) the Norman period, the vowel became first /awe/, later still
>
> /oh/, and finally /ooh/ at some time during the Middle English period. The
>
> spelling /wh/ was an invention of the Norman scribes who attempted to instil
>
> some order into Anglo-Saxon by creating the forms /ch, sh, th, wh/ for those
>
> sounds that did not occur in Norman French; for example as in the words
> 'child, shall, thought, while'.
>
>
> Unfortunately there was no indication given as to when the /hw/ of 'who' was
>
> reduced to /h/ -- at least my hasty perusal did not find it. I have also read
>
> somewhere that had (British) English been allowed to follow its own internal
>
> logic then the standard pronunciation today would have been 'oo', another
>
> example of the Principle of Least Effort (unconsciously) at work. However,
>
> aitch-dropping was noticed, and h-retention became an important social
>
> indicator. In the language-form that eventually became known as Received
>
> Pronunciation two important markers are the required presence of initial
>
> /h/ and the absence of post-vocalic /r/. Recently I watched a interesting
> television presentation by the historian Simon Schama and noticed during
> the course of his discussion that his aitches were very forceful; I wonder if
> he over-compensates.
>
>
>
> I must also report that in a recent news-conference President Obama
>
> pronounced 'wheel' as 'weal', but it was in the middle of the sentence,
>
> and unstressed. There is a wonderful example of this stressed/unstressed
>
> variation that can occur in the Appalachian Mountains (I have heard it
>
> myself) in the local pronunciation of the pronoun 'it', which can become
>
> /hit/ when stressed, as in "hit's a fine day, ain't it?". This would appear to
> be a hold-over from the Anglo-Saxon pronoun trio 'he (pronounced 'hey'),
>
> heo, hit' for 'he, she, it' (how 'heo' became 'she' is something of a
>
> mystery, at least to me!)
>
>
>
> And now, a treat for you: TheWorld.org has an interesting discussion of
>
> Canadian spelling at http://theworld.org/language (about halfway through
>
> the sound file) with an interview of someone named Joe Clark, who has
>
> written an e-book entitled 'Organizing Our Marvellous Neighbours: How
> to Feel Good About Canadian English', which you can also read about at
>
> http://en-ca.org/
>
>
>
> Sounds like it would be a good compromise to me,
>
> dshep
>

2009/3/20 paul vandenbrink <vandenbrinkg@...>:
> It just goes to prove that the Greeks did indeed have a word for
> everything. Is there a better English synonym, I could use?

"Echoism".

T

since onomatopoeia are words that imitate sounds, It seems to me that the best alternative name for them might be "sound-words", or "soundwords".

It doesn't seem crucial to me that they be marked somehow in the Shaw alphabet. There are several in 'Androcles and the Lion' and I didn't have any problem with them. But I suppose you could enclose such words in quotes, brackets, greater-than/less-than signs, etc.

<zoinks>

--- In shawalphabet@yahoogroups.com, "paul vandenbrink" <vandenbrinkg@...> wrote:
>
> Hi Philip
> Thanks again for clarifying a few issues. Especially
> oh-no-mut-oh-PEE-yuh. The penultimate
> stress reveals it to be of classical derivation,
> in this case Greek. Not a word however to be used in casual conversation, lest you be thought somewhat odd.
>
> It just goes to prove that the Greeks did indeed have a word for
> everything. Is there a better English synonym, I could use?
>
> Also, We need a way of indicating that a English word is
> Onomatopoeiac when writing it in Shavian Letters, so as
> to indicate that the Shavian
> spelling is only a rough approximation of the real sound.
> This is less of a problem in Roman spelling, where the majority of the spellings only provide a rough description of the pronounciation
> in any case.
>
> Regards, Paul V.
>
> P.S. Philip, I am mildly surprised, given that you are a strong proponent of the Shavian Alphabet, that you concern yourself about only being thought some what odd.
> It is a risky and arduous undertaking to introduce a new way of doing things. There is a famous quote from Niccolo Machiavelli of Florence, which says it much better. He ought to know.
> __________________attached_____________________________
>
> --- In shawalphabet@yahoogroups.com, dshep <dshepx@> wrote:
> > > P.S. Unfortunatly I pronounce "whew" as a kind of a long drawn out half whistle. Certain sound's like the Rasberry, Tsk Tsk, whew and Shoosh, we don't really have letters for. ...
> > Well, so do I, as a sort of whisper--which means that whew and woo may not really be a minimal pair after all.
> > > I think those kinds of words are called onomatopoeia, which I don't know how to pronounce.
>
> > This information courtesy of my local library. While there I thought to look up
> >
> > the word 'who' (which has five-and-a-half columns in the OED) to see if it
> >
> > had ever been pronounced with an initial /hw/. Indeed it had. Although there
> >
> > were several local variations, the most important appears to have been 'hwa'
> >
> > (to rhyme with bah) a thousand years or so ago. Three-hundred years later,
> >
> > after (or during) the Norman period, the vowel became first /awe/, later still
> >
> > /oh/, and finally /ooh/ at some time during the Middle English period. The
> >
> > spelling /wh/ was an invention of the Norman scribes who attempted to instil
> >
> > some order into Anglo-Saxon by creating the forms /ch, sh, th, wh/ for those
> >
> > sounds that did not occur in Norman French; for example as in the words
> > 'child, shall, thought, while'.
> >
> >
> > Unfortunately there was no indication given as to when the /hw/ of 'who' was
> >
> > reduced to /h/ -- at least my hasty perusal did not find it. I have also read
> >
> > somewhere that had (British) English been allowed to follow its own internal
> >
> > logic then the standard pronunciation today would have been 'oo', another
> >
> > example of the Principle of Least Effort (unconsciously) at work. However,
> >
> > aitch-dropping was noticed, and h-retention became an important social
> >
> > indicator. In the language-form that eventually became known as Received
> >
> > Pronunciation two important markers are the required presence of initial
> >
> > /h/ and the absence of post-vocalic /r/. Recently I watched a interesting
> > television presentation by the historian Simon Schama and noticed during
> > the course of his discussion that his aitches were very forceful; I wonder if
> > he over-compensates.
> >
> >
> >
> > I must also report that in a recent news-conference President Obama
> >
> > pronounced 'wheel' as 'weal', but it was in the middle of the sentence,
> >
> > and unstressed. There is a wonderful example of this stressed/unstressed
> >
> > variation that can occur in the Appalachian Mountains (I have heard it
> >
> > myself) in the local pronunciation of the pronoun 'it', which can become
> >
> > /hit/ when stressed, as in "hit's a fine day, ain't it?". This would appear to
> > be a hold-over from the Anglo-Saxon pronoun trio 'he (pronounced 'hey'),
> >
> > heo, hit' for 'he, she, it' (how 'heo' became 'she' is something of a
> >
> > mystery, at least to me!)
> >
> >
> >
> > And now, a treat for you: TheWorld.org has an interesting discussion of
> >
> > Canadian spelling at http://theworld.org/language (about halfway through
> >
> > the sound file) with an interview of someone named Joe Clark, who has
> >
> > written an e-book entitled 'Organizing Our Marvellous Neighbours: How
> > to Feel Good About Canadian English', which you can also read about at
> >
> > http://en-ca.org/
> >
> >
> >
> > Sounds like it would be a good compromise to me,
> >
> > dshep
> >
>

Paul wrote:

> P.S. Philip, I am mildly surprised, given that you are a strong
> proponent of the Shavian Alphabet, that you concern yourself
> about only being thought somewhat odd. ...

Paul -- joke, joke!!

And, I doubt Philip would wish to be burdened with being responsible
for my attempts at levity.

ever odd,
dshep

akt 3 i:

misez higinz: [kwFetiN /henri wiH a tuc] kernal /pikeriN: wil jM tel mI
wat iz H egzAkt stEt v TiNz in /wimpOl strIt?.

...

pikeriN: [cIrfuli: Az if His komplItli cEnJd H subJekt] wel, F hAv kom t
liv Her wiH /henri. wI wOrk togeHer At mF /indiAn dFalekts; n wI TiNk it
mOr konvInient--

...

misez higinz: kwFt sO. F nO Yl abQt HAt: it's An ekselent arEnJment. but
wEr duz His girl liv?

...

higinz: wiH us, v kOrs. wEr wUd SI liv?

...

misez higinz: but on wat termz? iz SI a servAnt? if not, wat iz SI?

...

pikeriN: [slOli] F TiNk F nO wat jM mIn, misez /higinz.

...

higinz: wel dAS mI if F dM! F'v hAd t wOrk At H girl everi dE fOr monTs
t get her t her prezent pic.

...

besFdz, SI'z jMsful. SI nOz wEr mF TiNz R, n rememberz mF apqntments n
sO fOrT.

...

misez higinz: hQ duz jUr hQskIper get on wiH her?

...

higinz: misez /pIrs? O, SI'z Joli glAd t get sO muc tEken Yf her hAndz;
fOr befOr /elFza kEm, SI hAd to hAv t fFnd TiNz n remFnd mI v mF
apQntments. but SI'z got som bI in her bonet abQt /elFza.

...

SI kIps sEiN "jM dOn't TiNk, sir": duzent SI, /pik?

...

pikeriN: jes: HAt's H fOrmjMla. "jM dOn't TiNk, sir." HAt's H end v
everi konversESon abQt /elFza.

...

higinz: Az if F ever stop TiNkiN abQt H girl n her konfQnded vQelz n
konsonAnts.

...

F'm wOrn Qt, TiNkiN abQt her, n wociN her lips n her tIT n her toN, not
t menSon her sOl, wic iz H kwEntest v H lot.

...

misez higinz: jM sertanli R a preti pEr v bEbIz, plEiN wiH jUr lFv dol.

...

higinz: plEiN! H hRdest Job F ever tAkeld: mEk nO mistEk abQt HAt,
moHer. but jM hAv nO FdIa hQ frFtfuli interestiN it iz t tEk a hjMmAn
bIiN n cEnJ her intM a kwFt diferent hjMmAn bIiN bF kreEtiN a nM spIc
fOr her. it's filiN up H dIpest gulf HAt separEts klAs from klAs n sOl
from sOl.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ end akt 3i

I have changed my transliterator to differentiate Up and Ado:

http://marnanel.org/shavian/transliterate?l=up+ado

This also works for Err and Array:

http://marnanel.org/shavian/transliterate?l=the+array+errs

This change has not worked through to the public version of the Perl module yet, but that's coming soon.

I have not yet added homonym support. This is on the cards.

The vowel mapping is now:

IH = if
EH = egg
AE = ash
AH = ado (in syllables without primary stress)
AO = on
UH = wool
AW = out
AA = ah
IY = eat
EY = age
AY = ice
AH = up (in syllables with primary stress)
OW = oak
UY = ooze
OY = oil
Nothing = awe

Up and Awe are not differentiated by CMUDict because of the father/bother merger:

http://marnanel.org/shavian/transliterate?l=Ah+I+am+in+awe

Currently I make them both Ah. A solution to this is suggested in my next post.

Thomas