Re: vowel troubles

Alexei A. Frounze wrote:
> Hi guys,
>
> Often times I make mistakes in reading new words or the words I know but
> whose pronunciation I've never heard before. I've already got an apology
> from my English teacher for the language and all people speaking it, but I
> still need some clue as to how I should pronounce the vowels.
>
> Before I begin, I must tell you that I live in the US and try to speak
> American English, whatever it is, but definetely not British or something of
> that sort.
>
> Basically, the vowel problem is manyfold:
>
> 1. the ugly fact that the vowels do not sound the way one would naturally
> want them to. For instance, to someone naturally speaking Russian (my case)
> or Spanish (almost my case, I've been learning Spanish for a while too), the
> e sound in the word man would never be attributed to the letter a or vice
> versa.

Don't think of the "man" vowel as an "e"! Yes, it has its similarities
to the "men" vowel, but we think of it as closer to the Russian
accented "a".

> Same with sounds of long e, ee, oo, short i (it would be more like
> long e or ee to us but to English speakers it's not the same thing, it's
> different), short u (a) and short o (a in case of American English) and
> apparently there's much more to it...
>
> And then again, there're horrible things like the letter a (its sound) in
> the word corporate. It's an i, not a!

Not at all. It can be spelled with any English vowel letter, and
native speakers often compare it particularly with the vowels in "pit"
and also in "putt" and "put" (in the latter case, for people who don't
round their lips in that word). According to
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_phonology>, it's usually spelled
"o" or "a" in Russian, as the first vowel in "molodoi" and the second
in "rano" (if I'm transliterating understandably).

> 2. the variety of vowel flavors, their sounds. I mean, again, it seems like
> there're a number of similar vowel sounds in English yet they're different
> and sometimes they can make quite a difference, e.g. robber vs rubber (hot
> vs hut),

For most Americans, these are similar, but you open your mouth
noticeably wider for "robber". The "hut" vowel is supposedly the same
as the first three vowels in "soobrazit'"--but *not* an accented
Russian "a" or "o".

> man vs men (bad vs bed, land vs lend), caught vs cut,

Surprisingly similar for me, but I think most English speakers would be
surprised that anyone could confuse those. In England, the "caught"
vowel is supposedly similar to the Russian "o"--Nabokov rhymed his
surname with "gawk of". (He was using "gawk" to imitate the call of
_Nycticorax nycticorax_, not in any of its dictionary meanings.) This
might work in or near New York, but in most of the U.S. the "aw" is
between the Russian "a" and "o", and a lot of us pronounce it with the
wide-open "rob" vowel.

> deed vs did

A lot of us Americans pronounce "did" and other short i's with a
schwa--which should make sense to you, given what you said about
"corporate".

> and many more examples are due here. In all these pairs I (and quite a lot
> of other people) would say almost the same vowel sound is used and therefore
> I (and they) would use the same letter for it in writing.

> And that would loose

"Lose", but at least that's a common native-speaker mistake.

> this subtle difference and make words totally indistinguishable. And
> that's what we do with English unless we're tought it in a right way, paying
> enough attention to not only the vocabulary and grammar but
> phonetics/pronunciation too. I had been tought Enlgish in such a bad way for
> a long time. Then I had to force myself to forget many wrong things and
> relearn the right ones.

It's too bad that you were taught English that way. Fortunately, I've
never had an experience like that. But I think you have to unlearn
some things you were taught about pronunciation.

> Alright, I'm probably not asking questions at these first two points, just
> speaking out all the pissiness I've been through with English. :) But the
> following are really the ones that I'd love to get right...
>
> 3. absence of strict spelling to pronunciation correspondence, essentially
> in vowel combinations (e.g. m*ea*t vs gr*ea*t vs w*ea*pon vs id*ea*; c*ou*rt
> vs d*ou*bt vs r*ou*t (2 pronunciations exist) vs t*ou*ch, sl*ow* vs c*ow*,
> etc etc). How do I know which is which?

It's "route", not "rout", that has two pronunciations. Otherwise I
have nothing to add to what Jim Lawton said.

> 4. "long" vs "short" pronunciation (e.g. am vs ate, egg vs eve, in vs ice,
> on vs open, up vs use). When one should treat a vowel as "long" and when as
> "short"? Is there a rule or a good set of patterns to rely on?
> Out of all, this little prob is probably of most importance to me now.

It's very rare for a vowel before two consonants to have what you, in
keeping with American usage, call the short pronunciation. Many of the
exceptions come in patterns: ghost, host, most, post; hast, paste,
waste; apron, matron, patron (speaking of patterns).

> 5. which vowel (actually, syllable) to stress (usually 1st but there're so
> many exceptions, e.g. mach*i*ne, probab*i*lity yet there're things like "an
> *o*bject" vs "to obj*e*ct"). Is there a rule or a good set of patterns to
> rely on?

Nope. It's just as bad as Russian. There is a pattern of verbs
accented on the second syllable and the corresponding nouns accented on
the first, like "object". See
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Initial-stress-derived_noun>, by
"a.u.e.'s own" Michael Hardy.

--
Jerry Friedman

.

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