Re: "turned script a" [was: Re: "Want" in AmEng and RP

Peter Moylan wrote:
You've brought up something that has had me bothered ever since I
first heard of Evan's ASCII IPA. I, who speak Australian English, have
approximately the same vowel in "rock" and "pot" as RP speakers do,
but I emphatically deny that it's a rounded [A].

I once lived in the USA long enough to pick up an approximately
Californian accent, and one of the things I had to do to achieve that
was to learn how to pronounce "pot" with a rounded [A], instead of
my native "pot" vowel.

That means that I both agree and disagree with [bA.b]. The vowel
sound in Australian or English "pot" does not occur in any dialect of
American English.

Of course, since you encountered every US dialect during your few years
at... *Berkeley*, was it? Bwahahahaha!

On the other hand, a rounded [A] is quite
common in many AmE dialects.

Not quite; here Bob (Sparky) is again correct. A rounded realization of
/A/ (and, specifically, the merged cot/caught vowel) is common in many
*CIC* US accents. I do not believe that a rounded realization of /A/ (the
"cot" vowel) is found in any *CINC* US accents, TICBWIS. I think Sparky
is basically right to insist that [A] is unrounded by definition, at least
in discussions like these, parrots and ventriloquists aside.

To put it another way: the sound we customarily denote as [A.]
in aue discussions is not a rounded [A], but most Americans will
hear it as a rounded [A].

I'm not sure that's true, though I'm not even sure I understand it. Many
Americans here RP "dog" [dA.g] and think it sounds a little bit like
"dug", a word with an unrounded (in AmE) vowel. To me, RP "dog" sounds
like "dawg" with a very short vowel.

Conversely, a rounded [A] sounds
like an American vowel to my Australian ears.

The only AmE dialects I have encountered that have markedly rounded cot
vowels are the CIC dialects of Eastern New England. If I were to imitate
Sparky, a cot-is-caught Western United States Speaker (a CIC WUSS), I
might well have to use a rounded vowel when reproducing his cot/caught
vowel, but that doesn't mean he actually uses a rounded vowel.

Also, I think, in many AmE CINC dialects, such as my own, a lightly
rounded [A], if you will, is the usual way that the 'caught' vowel (which
we tend to designate with the /O/ symbol) is realized. But you wouldn't
hear that in "cot".

--
Salvatore Volatile
ref at freeshell dot org

.

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