Regional Dialect and Idiolect Oddities (pronunciation)

[Derek]

Maybe I should make a topic about Praat and how to use it? Would anyone be interested? I don't know everything, but I had to use it extensively for my research project- phonetic case study of two Japanese speakers. Charting vowels and making spectrogram charts with textgrids and such is becoming a daily chore for me heh.

That'ld be great. I'm curious what my precise vowel realizations are.

[Iulus Cofield]

This reminds me of another thing though. It seems to me that I invariably pronounce [tr] (as in "true") as [t͡ʃr], and I think this is common if not standard, but I can't say I pay very close attention. What have others experienced?

Wait, you're saying you pronounce true as tshrue? I have never heard such a thing.

In my experience it's more like "tchrue." The sound is similar to saying "match" immediately followed by "rue."

I say either [t͡ʃr] or [tr] interchangeably.

In American English it's common, but not universal, to affricate /tr/ and /dr/ into [tʃɹ] and [dʒɹ]. In my idiolect there's a rather distinct lack of affrication in those sequences; I pronounce them as [t(ʰ)ɹ] and [dɹ] without much transitional articulation between the plosive and the liquid.

My phonology textbook uses the [t͡sr] regularly in narrow transcriptions of the author's speech, but I can't imagine saying either that or [t͡ʃr]. I'm much closer to Lazar.

This Praat thing sounds interesting. I can at best only guess at my precise pronunciations. I downloaded it, but I can't really figure out how it works.

In my introductory linguistics class when we were going over IPA a lot of the class objected to the professor's representation of <sing> as [sɪŋg] over [siŋg].

Well dictionaries have to give some kind of pronunciation guide, and they don't want to list every possible dialectal pronunciation.

This reminds me of another thing though. It seems to me that I invariably pronounce [tr] (as in "true") as [t͡ʃr], and I think this is common if not standard, but I can't say I pay very close attention. What have others experienced?

Same. I don't think I've ever heard un-tensed [æ] before [ŋ]. BTW, how does that pronunciation of "bang" compare to your normal long a, like in "bane"?

Here is a completely new one: I read some time ago about Ng-coalescence on Wikipedia. It specifically mentions "singer" and "finger" not rhyming (at least not exactly) in most dialects, the former being [sɪŋər] and the latter [fɪŋgər]. This surprised me. As far as I can tell, I pronounce "singer" and "finger" differ only in the initial consonant in my accent, but I honestly couldn't tell you whether it is [ɪŋər] or [ɪŋgər].

I've never heard anyone pronounce <sing> as anything but [si. A velar stop at the end sounds like a spelling pronunciation or something to me.

Oh wow. I didn't even know that <singer> and <finger> could rhyme in some dialects. For me, they're very distinctly [siŋ.ɚ] and [fiŋ.gɚ].

I think I say word final /ng/ invariably as [ŋ]. I'd like say I pronounce <ing> as [iŋ], I've certainly always thought of it as [i]. But it's hard to tell these things without equipment.

Maybe I should make a topic about Praat and how to use it? Would anyone be interested? I don't know everything, but I had to use it extensively for my research project- phonetic case study of two Japanese speakers. Charting vowels and making spectrogram charts with textgrids and such is becoming a daily chore for me heh.

I was actually thinking about asking you or one of my profs about this. I have no experience with programs like Praat and thus don't know how to translate the information into segmental information.

[Velifer]

My relatives ring a /beɪl/ and feed a /bɛl/ to the horse. *shrug*.

The IPA they used actually suggests that they ring a "bale" and feed a "bell" to the horse. Interesting idiolects, that person's family has... I wonder how that came about.

That's a very common dialect, and how it came about is an open question. Aside from quite a few pronunciations that are very close to completely different words (for example, "Fire" and "borrow" spoken by some Appalachians can sound like "far" and "bury" in Standard American English) there are also a host of idioms that don't always come out of the hills very cleanly. If you're not a speaker--I'm very deliberately not, but I grew up surrounded by people who were and I do sometimes slide into it--it's very hard to understand Appalachian. I can understand my mom's relatives, but my dad couldn't always tell what the in-laws were talking about.

[fənɑlədʒɪst]

Oh, I had no idea he/she was talking about Appalachian English. I'm not very familiar with the phonological stuffins going on in in Appalachian.

[cntrational]

Apparently, some US dialects say "warsh" and "idear", and this is attributed to hypercorrections that lived on. Can anybody confirm this explanation?

[Velifer]

Apparently, some US dialects say "warsh" and "idear", and this is attributed to hypercorrections that lived on. Can anybody confirm this explanation?

Confirm... hmm...

Research Requirements:
One time machine.
Seventeen linguists.
Tape recorders, pencils, computers, databases, and software
One deathmatch cage
Assorted weapons

[Aiwendil42]

Apparently, some US dialects say "warsh" and "idear", and this is attributed to hypercorrections that lived on. Can anybody confirm this explanation?

Yes, I've heard both of these cases of intrusive 'r' - though never from the same speaker. 'Warsh' is how my relatives in western Pennsylvania pronounce 'wash'. 'Idear' I have only heard, as far as I can remember, from speakers in the New York area, and I always assumed it derives from a hyper-correction on the part of natively non-rhotic speakers.

[Eebster the Great]

I had a grandmother who would warsh and dry her clothes then put them back in the draw.

[Derek]

My dad occasionally has intrusive r in words like "idea". I think its a hold over from non-rhotic Southern accents (note though that his accent is not non-rhotic).

[nehpest]

Apparently, some US dialects say "warsh" and "idear", and this is attributed to hypercorrections that lived on. Can anybody confirm this explanation?

Yes, I've heard both of these cases of intrusive 'r' - though never from the same speaker. 'Warsh' is how my relatives in western Pennsylvania pronounce 'wash'. 'Idear' I have only heard, as far as I can remember, from speakers in the New York area, and I always assumed it derives from a hyper-correction on the part of natively non-rhotic speakers.

One of my central Pennsylvania relatives pronounce it "warsh". No one else in the family pronounces it that way; we all thought she picked it up in her childhood in Appalachia, or her young-adult-hood in central California (the Fresno area). Can anyone from those areas comment?

[Iulus Cofield]

Where is the place of articulation for y'all's non-velar /l/'s?

Mine is dental. I've been asking around/tricking people into being linguistic guinea pigs and I'm finding a fair number of people who also say it dentally rather than alveolarly.

[fənɑlədʒɪst]

My clear /l/ is always realized as an alveolar or a dental, but I've never noticed an interdental allophone.

[cntrational]

My clear /l/ is always realized as an alveolar or a dental, but I've never noticed an interdental allophone.

http://phonetic-blog.blogspot.com/2010/ ... bials.html

[Velifer]

One of my central Pennsylvania relatives pronounce it "warsh". No one else in the family pronounces it that way; we all thought she picked it up in her childhood in Appalachia, or her young-adult-hood in central California (the Fresno area). Can anyone from those areas comment?

It's present in Appalachian. It also appears in the Upper Ohio Valley areas of the Lower North dialect, often in isolation ("warsh" is sometimes the only rhotic weirdness in someone's speech). [Note: This is from my direct anecdotal experience, and may reflect massive recall bias]

[Derek]

Where is the place of articulation for y'all's non-velar /l/'s?

Mine is dental. I've been asking around/tricking people into being linguistic guinea pigs and I'm finding a fair number of people who also say it dentally rather than alveolarly.

I believe all my l's are the same, but they're also completely fucked up. The tip of my tongue is actually completely down when I'm making an l. Its not vocalized, but I don't quite know what it is. Interestingly, when I'm singing it is a normal alveolar l when followed by a vowel without me even thinking about it.

[Iulus Cofield]

Is it velar? My velar /l/ has the back of my tongue touching the very bottom of the velum, which is hardly noticeable if it precedes a vowel.
And you really don't use an alveolar/dental /l/ outside of singing?

[Derek]

Might be velar, but its not a normal dark l (from my understanding, a dark l still has the tip of the tongue touching the roof of the mouth). And yeah, its kind of weird, I don't know why I would have learned to sing with a different articulation than talking (and btw I'm not a singer or anything, in fact I'm quite bad, I just sing to myself a lot).

[Iulus Cofield]

I kind of detest using terms like light and dark L, since I think they are archaic and muddled terms that continue muddled understandings of linguistics.

What I would call my dark L, if I were forced to use the term, is a velar /l/ that doesn't have any simultaneous places of articulation.

[posentin]

Huh. I've never met anyone who doesn't have æ-tensing before [ŋ]. I bet if I heard you say <bang>, I'd freak out. So I just ran Praat analysis on me saying <bang> ten times and averaged the results, and it appears that I'm currently saying something more akin to [b͡ɛeŋ] than [b͡eɪŋ].

Same. I don't think I've ever heard un-tensed [æ] before [ŋ]. BTW, how does that pronunciation of "bang" compare to your normal long a, like in "bane"?

For tensing of [æ] before [ŋ], my cases of <bang> <rang> and <bank> end up closer to [eə], similar to my tensing before [n] and [m], but <hang> and <thank> are near [eɪ]. <tank> seems to take either, or even [æ] on occasion.

Oddly, I currently know someone who has minimal [æ] tensing before [ŋ], only his <thank> and <hang> are consistently raised, usually near [eɪ].
Also, he and many of his friends, say "tour" as [tɔʊɹ], which is uncommon in coastal california, but deep inland california seems to retain some midwestern/southern features, most notably the pin/pen merger in inland areas like sacramento and bakersfield.

This Praat thing sounds interesting. I can at best only guess at my precise pronunciations. I downloaded it, but I can't really figure out how it works.

Maybe I should make a topic about Praat and how to use it? Would anyone be interested? I don't know everything, but I had to use it extensively for my research project- phonetic case study of two Japanese speakers. Charting vowels and making spectrogram charts with textgrids and such is becoming a daily chore for me heh.

That'ld be great. I'm curious what my precise vowel realizations are.

+1 to a how to Praat thread

[fənɑlədʒɪst]

I've actually started that Praat "How to" thread, but I haven't had a change to do anything with it other than put up some info on how to read and write audio files. I'll see if I can find some time later today to do something where you actually look at the spectrograms.

[Lazar]

Relevant to this thread: I just wrote a rather lengthy post on the language forum UniLang, outlining the ways in which I've changed my idiolect. Y'all should give it at least a skim.

[Monika]

Interesting.

I wish I found a way to change my pronunciation to Standard American English ... or even not so standard American English, just less German-accented.

[Velifer]

just less German-accented.

Stop hanging out with all those Germans.

There are voice coaches for actors that specialize in training people to use different dialects for specific parts.

Keep in mind that in America, there is absolutely no benefit to speaking SAE. Our national news talents often speak with a Great Lakes accent specific to Northeast Ohio. Just about any accent from the UK will go far in getting you laid here. Also, sounding like an American while not in America can be bad for your health.

[Monika]

just less German-accented.

Stop hanging out with all those Germans.

You mean like, go live in the US for a year? Been there, done that, got a couple of really nice T-shirts , but did not get rid of my accent . Well, at least it improved my listening comprehension by 1000% (approximately).

There are voice coaches for actors that specialize in training people to use different dialects for specific parts.

Probably very expensive.

Keep in mind that in America, there is absolutely no benefit to speaking SAE. Our national news talents often speak with a Great Lakes accent specific to Northeast Ohio. Just about any accent from the UK will go far in getting you laid here.

Yeah as I said, not-so-standard American English would be fine, too. Or British or whatever. Just something that doesn't make people go "Wait, was that English?"

Also, sounding like an American while not in America can be bad for your health.

I have no intention to visit Iraq or Afghanistan any time soon.

[Eebster the Great]

Our national news talents often speak with a Great Lakes accent specific to Northeast Ohio.

Some do, but an even greater number speak with accents common throughout the US, and especially common in the central US. Apparently a Nebraska accent (whatever that is) is very desired.

[Iulus Cofield]

One radio host in Portland, OR said she came to Oregon to learn how speak a more neutral accent, since the PNW dialect only varies from GA in a few ways.

[Iulus Cofield]

Today I was told today that I lengthen my intervocalic /r/s in some way. I can't tell if I'm geminating them or if I'm rhotacizing the preceding vowel or something else. I might try to figure it out in Praat later.

[nightbird]

Just about any accent from the UK will go far in getting you laid here.

If one more person says so, I'll be tempted to come over and give it a try

[Monika]

Let's see what graphjam has to say about this:

[posentin]

that should say what "north american" girls look for haha

[Derek]

I was surprised to find out today that /mʌnstɚ/ (my pronunciation) was not listed as an alternate pronunciation of /mɑːnstɚ/. Does anyone else use this pronunciation, or heard it used? Is it just me?

[Eebster the Great]

I was surprised to find out today that /mʌnstɚ/ (my pronunciation) was not listed as an alternate pronunciation of /mɑːnstɚ/. Does anyone else use this pronunciation, or heard it used? Is it just me?

You mean for "monster?" Strange, I've never heard that pronunciation before.

[Monika]

I always thought it's /mʌnstɚ/ ... but I am not a native speaker.

[eSOANEM]

I was surprised to find out today that /mʌnstɚ/ (my pronunciation) was not listed as an alternate pronunciation of /mɑːnstɚ/. Does anyone else use this pronunciation, or heard it used? Is it just me?

As a brit, both sound plausibly American to me although I tend to pronounce it /ˈmɒnstə/ myself. That said, wiktionary at least (and possibly whatever dictionary you're using) is only giving a phonemic transcription and, if indeed you do mean monster, both "ʌ" and "ɑː" correlate to a "ɒ" in British English rather than the "ɐ" that "ʌ" often correlates to so the two may be assumed to be allophonic variations and hence not listed as an alternative pronunciation.

[Eebster the Great]

As an American, I have heard /mɒnstɚ/ and very rarely /mɑːnstɚ/ (as in the sound clip on wiktionary), but never /mʌnstɚ/. /mʌnstɚ/ is how I would pronounce muenster cheese.