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Joonas Ilmavirta

3:39 PM

Regarding this new pronunciation question, am I the only one here who can't tell the difference between the two Es?

4 hours later…

Adam

7:45 PM

@JoonasIlmavirta It seems like the same sound to me. Seems like that's what the author of the answer is getting at?

Joonas Ilmavirta

@Adam In IPA they are classified as two distinct sounds.

International Phonetic Alphabet

The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is an alphabetic system of phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin script. It was devised by the International Phonetic Association in the late 19th century as a standardized representation of the sounds of spoken language. The IPA is used by lexicographers, foreign language students and teachers, linguists, speech-language pathologists, singers, actors, constructed language creators and translators.The IPA is designed to represent those qualities of speech that are part of lexical (and to a limited extent prosodic) sounds in oral language: phones...

But I consistently find myself unable to make the distinction.

1 hour later…

Adam

9:07 PM

@JoonasIlmavirta Are they both on this chart of audio samples?

Joonas Ilmavirta

9:24 PM

@Adam They are!

That looks like something I should study. But I fear that even if I can hear the difference in isolation, there's quite a distance to hearing any in context or being able to produce.

Adam

@JoonasIlmavirta Which vowels are they? I thought it was ɛ and e but those sound different to me.

Joonas Ilmavirta

@Adam Those two exactly!

The difference to me is very minor, and I have failed several times to hear any difference in context. But perhaps getting used to them without any context would help.

Adam

@JoonasIlmavirta To me, e sounds like the a sound in hate, but ɛ sounds like something midway between pet and bag.

Joonas Ilmavirta

@Adam Judging by the chart, that's what it should be.

It's just my unfamiliarity with ɛ, I think.

Adam

@JoonasIlmavirta It actually makes me think of people from the north midwest here in the US, particularly northern Wisconsin or Minnesota. They sometimes say a word like bag and the a is almost like the a in hate. It's not really the same as ɛ, but similar.

Joonas Ilmavirta

9:33 PM

@Adam Can you find that on the chart? There's plenty to choose from.

Adam

@JoonasIlmavirta This actually sounds pretty close to the a I'm thinking of.

The a in bag when I say it is definitely the æ sound.

Joonas Ilmavirta

@Adam Same here. That's also the Finnish ä.

Adam

Interesting, as someone totally not familiar with Finnish I see an A with umlauts and think it's more of an ahh sound.

This is a completed uneducated opinion, though

Joonas Ilmavirta