Language Overflow

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CowperKettle

03:21

> Clerics are grooming vulnerable girls in Iraq and offering them for sex, using a controversial religious practice known as “pleasure marriage”.

bbc.co.uk/news/extra/iuKTEGjKgS/teenage_iraq_brides

CowperKettle

04:16

Word of the day: cultivar

6 hours later…

userr2684291

09:51

Huh.

I've known the meaning of cultivar since high school but only now has it occurred to me that it is a result of cultivation.

We even have a similar word in my first language (kultivar, kultivacija).

@Araucaria ell.stackexchange.com/questions/226782/… I'm not a native speaker of English, but if I were to pronounce the as thuh in front of a word such as apple, I'd have to make an effort.

The same with a apple. Is there a reason for this? Btw I've heard of this before (people not pronouncing the as thee before vowel sounds), but I've never heard it, though maybe I haven't listened enough. Note that this particular speaker is from Canada. Sometimes when I enunciate the a before any sort of sound, i.e. pronounce it as the letter A, I don't feel the need to turn it into an an even when a vowel follows. Does this happen to native speakers?

Anonymous

10:06

@userr2684291 It's true that not every native speaker follows the textbook rule for allomorphy there.

Anonymous

These alternations are often analyzed as ways to resolve hiatus (trying to avoid a sequence of two vowels across syllable boundaries).

Anonymous

But we have other ways we can do that. If I reduce a and say a apple, I find myself inserting a glottal consonant between the two, making a boundary.

Anonymous

So it makes sense that some people might feel comfortable saying a apple with that extra consonant in between.

Anonymous

And as far as pronouncing a as the letter A . . . Well, that kind of makes sense, because the endpoint in /eɪ/ is fairly close to /j/. You probably don't really pronounce a glide there, but it's kinda like a phonetic glide insertion. Glide insertion is another strategy to resolve hiatus.

Anonymous

I don't know exactly how you're pronouncing it or how you're thinking about it.

Anonymous

10:16

I can imagine it being /j/-y.

userr2684291

@snailboat Oh, that makes a lot of sense. The apple with a glottal stop ...interpolated in between is perfectly fine for me to say as well, but it's sort of deliberate. Yes, it's a /j/. Honestly I didn't even know it's pronounced /eI/, haha.

Anonymous

Anonymous

From A Course in Phonetics, 6th ed. (p.90).

Anonymous

/j/ being the semivowel counterpart of /i/, it's a bit higher up than the typical endpoint of /eɪ/. They're close neighbors, though :-)

Anonymous

In Japanese, a lot of speakers don't like saying baai, so they say bawai or bayai to resolve hiatus. Glide insertion in action!

Anonymous

10:23

Of course, it tends to happen naturally without the speakers noticing.

Anonymous

Which brings me to one more point that might be relevant . . .

Anonymous

For me, I never change the pronunciation of the based on the word that follows it. I'm aware of that convention, but I don't follow it. I always say thuh. The only time I say thee is when I want to put emphasis on the article itself. It doesn't matter in either case what word follows it. — Jason Bassford 10 hours ago

Anonymous

People tend to be kind of bad at introspection about their own pronunciation, because what they do tends to change when they pay attention.

Anonymous

When people make claims like this about their own speech, I wouldn't say you should necessarily doubt them, but it can be surprising how often people are wrong about things like this.

Anonymous

Anyway, that's about all I have to say on the topic. Araucaria might have more to say :-)

userr2684291

10:36

Haha. Thanks for the explanation. I initially linked to that because I doubted it. When I found out about the "rule" for the pronunciation of to, etc. before vowels, my first thought was, "oh, I didn't know about this one, and I've probably been pronouncing it slightly off", and then I sort of forced the schwa pronunciation in a couple of examples.

But then I read a couple of example sentences and I "forgot I didn't know about that 'rule'" and did use the non-schwa pronunciation, and realized I was wrong.

(I.e. apparently I have learned to pronounce it with a slight /u:/ before vowels without ever hearing about that rule.)

And then I tried forcing the schwa in the the apple examples while trying to speak fast, and an unnoticeable /i:/ crept in when I listened closely, so that's why I doubted their comment. But the glottal stop makes sense, too.

1 hour later…

Araucaria

11:59

@snailboat @userr2684291 :

A: Why do American speakers pronounce "the" as "/ðə/" before vowels?

Many speakers of Gen Am and also speakers of British Englishes, including some young RP speakers, use a hard attack on the second word to separate a word-final and word initial vowel. For a minority of speakers this also occurs after the definite article. A ʜᴀʀᴅ ᴀᴛᴛᴀᴄᴋ is when a speaker uses a ...

A: BrE: pronunciation of "to"

In Southern Standard British English this word has two weak forms and one strong form. This applies both to the preposition to and the to that we see before infinitives. The strong form is /tu:/ (like the word too). The weak form is /tə/ before a consonant (like the last syllable of pasta) and ...

Araucaria

12:26

@snailboat No, I think you've covered everything. Especially, about speakers' perceptions of their own speech +10 (sic).

6 hours later…

CowperKettle

18:03

> What will happen if you have a wooden car with wooden engine and wooden wheels?
It wooden start.