/ɑ/ is called open back unrounded vowel, however it appears in the center bottom of the vowel trapezoid of General American English at https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_American#Phonology . Why? If GA English indeed uses that bottom central vowel, why not represent it with /ä/ (open central unrounded vowel)? The cot-caught merger is out of the scope of this … Read more
I find the phonemic symbols are different for the same word among dictionaries. Take the word “tuck” for example. In Oxford Learner’s Dictionary, its /tʌk/ for both British English and North American English. However, in Kindle’s dictionary which is The New Oxford American Dictionary, it’s /tək/. It doesn’t make sense to me that one word … Read more
The grapheme X can sometimes be pronounced with a two-phoneme sequence, such as the following: /ks/ – taxi /gz/ – exact /kʃ/ – anxious /ŋz/ – anxiety /gʒ/ – luxury For these two-phoneme sequences, I’m wondering how the 2 phonemes are split across syllables. When the X comes at the end of the first syllable… … Read more
I am leaning towards no, but would like confirmation and perhaps an example to illustrate. Answer The short answer is no. In English, the phones [ɪ] and [i] are not just allophones of a single phoneme. There are many minimal pairs like “bit-beat”, “shit-sheet”, “bitch-beach” that establish that [ɪ] and [i] (in a usual English … Read more
English has a lot of pangrams, which are short sentences that use every letter of the alphabet at least once. This website has several examples. But is there a similar thing that is designed to use (almost) every phoneme of the English language? I know it would be nearly impossible to come up with something … Read more
I was reading a book on English spelling (Dictionary of the British English Spelling System, by Greg Brooks) and it mentioned that the Short A sound (æ) can be spelled using the following graphemes: a, as in cat i, as in timbre ai, as in plaid al, as in salmon ei, as in reveille (only … Read more
Is there any Saxon (native) word that contains /ʒ/? All words containing that sound I can think of such as genre, garage, luge, vision, visual, etc. are from French. Answer I would guess not, although I haven’t made an extensive search. There don’t seem to be many possible ways for it to develop according to … Read more
According to this description of the English phonotactics, the schwa /ə/ doesn’t occur in stressed syllables. But Cambridge Dictionary Onlines, Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary and Longman Pronunciation Dictionary say otherwise: the word “because” has been variously transcribed as /bɪˈkəz/ or /bəˈkəz/. So in which source should I believe? Or is there any error in transcription … Read more
I’m looking for a text that can be used to showcase various differences in pronunciation across English accents. For example, it could include examples of the various splits/mergers (Mary/merry/mary, fern/fir/fur, cot/caught, etc.), and feature words pronounced differently by, e.g., Canadian, American, and British speakers. I once saw such a text referenced in a comment to … Read more
From what I understand on phonetics/phonology, /ɪə/, /eə/, /ʊə/ can simply be considered as allophones of /ɪr/, /er/, /ʊr/, but most traditional dictionaries treat them as distinct phonemes. Is that just a learners’ dictionary thing (to denote the clear phonetic differences between major dialects, rhotic or not, etc.) for the sake of convenience or is … Read more
