Mon, 20 Dec 2021 09:32:47 -0800 (PST): "Peter T. Daniels"
<grammatim@verizon.net> scribeva:

>On Monday, December 20, 2021 at 10:52:52 AM UTC-5, wugi wrote:
>> Op 20-12-2021 om 13:55 schreef Peter T. Daniels:
>> > On Sunday, December 19, 2021 at 9:54:18 PM UTC-5, Ruud Harmsen wrote:
>> >> Sun, 19 Dec 2021 20:53:58 +0100: wugi <wu...@scrlt.com> scribeva:
>
>> >>> I'm clearly missing a pointe here.
>> > Clearly, but I can't tell what your latest problem is.
>>
>> If that applies to me,
>
>I don't think it did.
>
>> I don't see any direct relation between
>> long/short distinction (of what?) and diphthongs. ("short/long is the
>> British phoneticians' way of describing what AmE calls diphthongs.", PTD)
>>
>> Apart from the observation that long vowels (not all) tend to
>> diphthongize in English, any variety.
>
>It's pretty simple. British phoneticians tend to transcribe "lake"
>as [le:k],

They don't. Only for Scottish English. Otherwise the post [leIk] and
/leIk/.

>American linguists as /leyk/, and their linguists seem
>to have taken the phonetic practice over into their phonemic
>transcriptions.

>> (Holland Dutch is mimicking it, with its own "long" oo and ee.)
>> (British English seeks some compensation by monophthising sounds like in
>> fire, wire, shower, flour.)

Mon, 20 Dec 2021 20:57:21 +0100: wugi <brol@wugi.be> scribeva:

>> It's pretty simple. British phoneticians tend to transcribe "lake"
>> as [le:k], American linguists as /leyk/, and their linguists seem
>> to have taken the phonetic practice over into their phonemic
>> transcriptions.
>
>
>Aha. Admittedly a Brits "lake" may sound hardly diphthongized, but
>nevertheless...

Wrong. Very diphthongized, except in Scotland, Northern England,
Northern Ireland.

On Monday, December 20, 2021 at 5:02:49 PM UTC-5, DKleinecke wrote:
> On Monday, December 20, 2021 at 4:55:29 AM UTC-8, Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> > On Sunday, December 19, 2021 at 7:30:29 PM UTC-5, DKleinecke wrote:
> >
> > > Phonemes are what an alphabet should be.
> > Do you really think all the different allomorphs of, say, "photograph"
> > should be spelled differently? (Especially since they're stress-
> > conditioned?)
>
> I imagine all alphabets to be trying to be a one letter per phoneme

They (usually) _start out_ that way, but language changes, writing
is fixed, and unless you want it to be hard to read something from
a century ago, or from beyond an ocean, you'll let it be.

> systems. Some are more successful than others. Of course if one
> is borrowing an alphabet rather than inventing your own the fit is
> much harder to achieve.

No, the fit is likely to be a bit different, that's all.

> I know stress is phonemic in English but my system is defective in
> having no orthographic way to mark it. I suspect syllable division
> may also be phonemic and I do write it with "."

Mon, 20 Dec 2021 20:57:21 +0100: wugi <brol@wugi.be> scribeva:

>I'm used (at least I used to be) to the coding of my Wolters'
>Woordenboeken, so that would be [leik]. Though by now I would prefer
>[lejk] or even [le:jk].

Never ever seen [le:jk]. Are you sure? Look again.

>It's almost exactly what trendy Holland Dutch is
>nowadays making of "leek" [le:k], layperson/appeared, besides [bo:wm] of
>"boom" [bo:m], tree

Nowadays? At least 100 years old.

Mon, 20 Dec 2021 22:20:47 +0100: Tim Lang <me@privacy.net> scribeva:

>On 20.12.2021 20:57, wugi wrote:
>
>>It's almost exactly what trendy Holland Dutch is
>>nowadays making of "leek" [le:k], layperson/appeared, besides [bo:wm] of
>>"boom" [bo:m], tree.
>
>Oha, da seid Ihr aber auch "typisch ... Deutsch", wa!
>(Oder "genauer" gesagt: ... "Preußisch". :-D)
>
>>(BrE [fa:], [wa:], [Sa:], [fla:])
>
>In which BE dialect?! (In Northern ones?)

Old fashioned received pronunciation.

On Monday, December 20, 2021 at 5:04:13 PM UTC-5, Ruud Harmsen wrote:
> Mon, 20 Dec 2021 04:55:50 -0800 (PST): "Peter T. Daniels"
> <gram...@verizon.net> scribeva:
> >On Sunday, December 19, 2021 at 9:54:18 PM UTC-5, Ruud Harmsen wrote:
> >> Sun, 19 Dec 2021 20:53:58 +0100: wugi <wu...@scrlt.com> scribeva:

> >> >I don't support either camp, but how obscure can a statement be.
> >> >UKE short/long ~ AmE diphthong?
> >> >or UKE long ~ AmE diphthong??
> >> >If /few/ is not considered having a long /u:/ then it has no diphthong
> >> >either???
> >> >/jutiliti/ has no diphthong but /ju:z/ has????
> >> >Father has a long vowel, ergo a diphthong?!
> >> For forced symmetry, they posit an /h/ there, which of course isn't an
> >> [h], because English
> >No, *British* English.
> >> phonotactics don't allow that. /fahðer/. Only
> >> short vowels.
> >> >I'm clearly missing a pointe here.
>
> Yeah, right, American English really has syllable-final [h]. Note that
> I write [h], not /h/ in Americanist notation.

Where has anyone suggested that AmE has syllable-final [h]?

> You're really hilarious sometimes. Can you, as a American, pronounce
> Mehmet and Zahra? Come on.

I know that people who haven't studied an "Oriental" language or the
history of the area can't. What do foreign names have to do with
anything? They also "can't" pronounce Van Gogh. So what?

> >Clearly, but I can't tell what your latest problem is.

On Monday, December 20, 2021 at 11:05:50 PM UTC+1, Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> On Monday, December 20, 2021 at 5:02:02 PM UTC-5, Ruud Harmsen wrote:
> > Mon, 20 Dec 2021 04:55:28 -0800 (PST): "Peter T. Daniels"
> > <gram...@verizon.net> scribeva:
> > >On Sunday, December 19, 2021 at 7:30:29 PM UTC-5, DKleinecke wrote:
> > >
> > >> Phonemes are what an alphabet should be.
> > >
> > >Do you really think all the different allomorphs of, say, "photograph"
> > >should be spelled differently? (Especially since they're stress-
> > >conditioned?)
> > Can "photograph" be stressed other that initially, ever, anywhere?
> >
> > New to me.
> Good grief.
> photograph-er, -y
> photograph-ic

You failed to mention those words. Would have made it clearer.

On Monday, December 20, 2021 at 11:11:30 PM UTC+1, Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> On Monday, December 20, 2021 at 5:04:13 PM UTC-5, Ruud Harmsen wrote:
> > Mon, 20 Dec 2021 04:55:50 -0800 (PST): "Peter T. Daniels"
> > <gram...@verizon.net> scribeva:
> > >On Sunday, December 19, 2021 at 9:54:18 PM UTC-5, Ruud Harmsen wrote:
> > >> Sun, 19 Dec 2021 20:53:58 +0100: wugi <wu...@scrlt.com> scribeva:
>
> > >> >I don't support either camp, but how obscure can a statement be.
> > >> >UKE short/long ~ AmE diphthong?
> > >> >or UKE long ~ AmE diphthong??
> > >> >If /few/ is not considered having a long /u:/ then it has no diphthong
> > >> >either???
> > >> >/jutiliti/ has no diphthong but /ju:z/ has????
> > >> >Father has a long vowel, ergo a diphthong?!
> > >> For forced symmetry, they posit an /h/ there, which of course isn't an
> > >> [h], because English
> > >No, *British* English.
> > >> phonotactics don't allow that. /fahðer/. Only
> > >> short vowels.
> > >> >I'm clearly missing a pointe here.
> >
> > Yeah, right, American English really has syllable-final [h]. Note that
> > I write [h], not /h/ in Americanist notation.
> Where has anyone suggested that AmE has syllable-final [h]?

You did. Just read your own nonsense and try to understand it. I can't.

> > You're really hilarious sometimes. Can you, as a American, pronounce
> > Mehmet and Zahra? Come on.
> I know that people who haven't studied an "Oriental" language or the
> history of the area can't. What do foreign names have to do with
> anything? They also "can't" pronounce Van Gogh. So what?
> > >Clearly, but I can't tell what your latest problem is.

On Monday, December 20, 2021 at 7:52:52 AM UTC-8, wugi wrote:
> Op 20-12-2021 om 13:55 schreef Peter T. Daniels:
> > On Sunday, December 19, 2021 at 9:54:18 PM UTC-5, Ruud Harmsen wrote:
> >> Sun, 19 Dec 2021 20:53:58 +0100: wugi <wu...@scrlt.com> scribeva:
> >>> I'm clearly missing a pointe here.
> >
> > Clearly, but I can't tell what your latest problem is.
> If that applies to me, I don't see any direct relation between
> long/short distinction (of what?) and diphthongs. ("short/long is the
> British phoneticians' way of describing what AmE calls diphthongs.", PTD)
>
> Apart from the observation that long vowels (not all) tend to
> diphthongize in English, any variety.
> (Holland Dutch is mimicking it, with its own "long" oo and ee.)
> (British English seeks some compensation by monophthising sounds like in
> fire, wire, shower, flour.)
Hum

/fayr/ /wayr/ /shawr/ /flawr/

On 20.12.2021 23:19, DKleinecke wrote:

>>fire, wire, shower, flour.)
>
>Hum
>
>/fayr/ /wayr/ /shawr/ /flawr/

Would these look like this {feɪr/fejr; weɪr or waɪr; ʃɑʊr; flɑʊr} in
the IPA rendition? And no /ə/ there whatsoever? (I know of AE year
/yɪr/, whereas in BE it sounds like this /jə:::::/.

German also has "fire" and "shower": "Feuer, Schauer;" and in most re-
gional dialects these are pronounced as if they were written "Foja,
Schaua, Fɔjə, Schaʊə," or "Fojɐ̯, Schaʊɐ̯", "i.e., even without any
/r, R, ʁ/. Except for regions where this is (clearly or ostensibly)
uttered (e.g. in Switzerland, in Suebia of South Germany and in some
northern areas - as well as in traditional East European German
communities (in Romania, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Poland, Russia), incl.
most Yiddisch communities whenever their /r/ is not an uvular /r/.

(That what you're describing in this thread seems to be kind of a
"Spiegelbild" of this in the AE world (with the Scots being in a
similar position as the Swiss Alemanian Germans are compared to
other dialectal representatives :-), i.e. Zürich versus Vienna,
Munich, Cologne, Berlin).

Anyway, your (and other AE phon. transcr. systems) can't compete with
IPA, both the "traditional" ("old-fashioned") version (taught to
Engl. lang. students outside N-Amer), and the IPA for the so-called
"narrow transcription" (that deals with all kind of variants of
/r/, /ə/ etc., typical for regions, for "disappearing tribes" as
well as for individuals with some "special" pronunciation peculiari-
ties).

After all, this is the problem of the English in written: a "catastro-
phe" or a world of a ... "libertarian", almost "total" ... "freedom"
of eggzpreshən. :-) That's the result of not adapting the writing
in medieval times to all kind of "sound shifts".

In comparision, official writing systems for e.g. Serbo-Croatian-
Bosnian, Hungarian, Turkey-Turkish, Romanian, seemingly for Slovak,
Polish, as well, are almost kinds of ... "(narrow) phonetic
transcriptions", i.e., real "wysiwyg" renderings. The Russian and
Ukrainian almost also, except for Russian that alters the reading
of some letters in unexpected ways /some vowles: ə; a; and conson.
g > v/; or even Greek, that also reads some letters in different ways
(esp. having various letter selections for the same vowel /i/, for
obvious ... etymological reasons).

Tim

On 20.12.2021 23:09, Ruud Harmsen wrote:

>>>(BrE [fa:], [wa:], [Sa:], [fla:])
>>
>>In which BE dialect?! (In Northern ones?)
>
>Old fashioned received pronunciation.

Oh. In the lang. style by the "upper crust"? :)

Tim

On 20.12.2021 23:08, Ruud Harmsen wrote:

>>besides [bo:wm] of "boom" [bo:m], tree
>
>Nowadays? At least 100 years old.

BTW: are these the same occurrences as in Northern German (Low German,
Nedersäksesch) equivalents Blohm & Boom? (In Bavarian, Baum > Baam /a:/,
esp. as a plural.)

Tim

On 20.12.2021 23:07, Ruud Harmsen wrote:

>>Aha. Admittedly a Brits "lake" may sound hardly diphthongized, but
>>nevertheless...
>
>Wrong. Very diphthongized, except in Scotland, Northern England,
>Northern Ireland.

Wow, highly interesting: Wugi has a ... "German" perception of the
thing /e and e: instead of ej/. Most Germans, from Flensburg to
Bolzano and Aachen to Vienna have this perception. ("Hee, ohkeh" :-))

Tim

On 20.12.2021 23:03, Peter T. Daniels wrote:

>>(Who by and large aren't aware of [eɪ]. Therefore, most of
>>them think "hey" and "OK" should be pronounced [heː] and [o:-ke:],
>>although the genuine [heɪ] pronunciation really exists
>>both in standard Hochdeutsch and in all regional dialects, as well.
>>Even variants such as [hɛɪ, hæɪ] (as it were written *häj).
>
>Distinguish closed ("checked") and open syllables!

But the problem here (in the case of /ei/<!=>/e:/) is that some
Gerry native speakers aren't able to detect any /ei/ and
(surprise surprise) no teacher has ever taught them that there is
an /ei/ pronunciation as well (well, perhaps excepting the teachers
who teach us English, here, in Europe), esp. when it also exists
in the mother tongue of the native speaker (ie, in German; at least
whenever one yells "hey!" /hej/). And this has nothing to do with
"closed" and "open", but only with the inability to utter
some sounds due to the simple fact certain persons or regions
aren't aware of them. Typical for German lang. speakers are
these as well: /ʒ, dʒ, z/. And in endings ("Auslaut"): /b,g,d,
z,v,ð (&c)/: German native-speakers will always pronounce them
in the ... devoiced way /p,k,t,s,f,θ/. This is why almost no
German would ever say "live" /lajv/, but /lajf/. :)

>Where do they say "rainbow" that way?

Midwest (approx.). E.g. the a capella group "Home Free" (at least two
of them utter rather rænboʊ, i.e., no /ej/ or /eɪ/ there. (I have no
idea whether this is a typical AE phenomenon in some areas or if it
is an influence from the languages of the ancestors of those people:
German and Swedish.)

>>the 2nd (same) vowel. (As in other languages e.g. re- + words starting
>>with e-; or in "co-operation, -operare".)
>
>I think we have repeated vowels only in extremely learnèd words like
>"oöcyte."
>
>"Cooperate" is /kowap@reyt/.

I had written "as in other languages" - vide supra - very well knowing
that Anglos make of cooperate kəʊɒpəreɪt and kə(ʊ)ʌpəreɪt.

>>Or [lāk], as in Webster, Bantam &c dictionaries (for decades).
>
>No -- they only use backslashes, so as not to take a position '
>on phonemicization. They use macrons for "long vowels,"
>which are the v owels that "say their name"
>
>>Where [ā] = IPA [eɪ] (or Daniel Jones [ei]), but [a] = [æ].
>
>Each dictionary company can make its own choices. Usually theiy're
>based on what M-W used in the 1850s (decades before IPA).

Yes: Webster (Merriam-Webster) e.g. a Simon & Schuster "2nd college
edition" 1980 as well as www.m-w.com _today_ have /ā/ for /eɪ, ej, ey/.
The same in different editions of the Bantam thick as a brick paperbook
AE dictionaries. All the other ones, esp. for BE, use the Daniel Jones
i.e. IPA rendition either /ei/ or /eɪ/. (A bit strange: almost none
/ej/, which would be 100% OK as well.)

So, not quite "each dictionary company" "makes its own choices", but
there is some system in the AE kind of phon.transcr. too. But /eɪ/
is systematically showed this way (/ā/), never mixed up (e.g. /e:/).

Tim

On 20.12.2021 23:02, DKleinecke wrote:

>I imagine all alphabets to be trying to be a one letter per phoneme
>systems. Some are more successful than others. Of course if one
>is borrowing an alphabet rather than inventing your own the fit is
>much harder to achieve.

Too late: the Brits should have invented an adapted one 500-800 years
ago. What has happened: whole lotta "frozen" renderings have been in
use, such as "k/night, enough, laugh, dove, blood" whereas pronuncia-
tions changed several times long ago; and by means of German & al.
Germanic dialects (by comparing) one can imagine how the (slightly
adapted) old writing habits still in use was a valid transcription
for the then English usage of the 1100-1500 time periods (e.g. German
Nacht /nʌχt/, genug: in the Low German variant: jenuch /je'nʊχ/, Duwe
/'du:və/ (standard G.: Taube /'tɑʊbə/), Blut /blu:t/).

>I know stress is phonemic in English but my system is defective in
>having no orthographic way to mark it.

How about this kind of apostrophe: "'"? For which modern keyboards
have an extra key (usually neighboring the "Enter"/"Return" key).
Or applying an accent upon the vowel of the relevant syllable (as in
Spanish) in order to avoid ambiguous reading situations.

Tim

On 20.12.2021 22:52, DKleinecke wrote:

>(plus the apostrophe for glottal stop).

That glottal stop, to be ... shown, is not as important
even in BE, let alone in other variants of English.
And no foreigner AFAIK would be puzzled by this kind
of British strange "hickup". So why showing it in
writing. :) The apostrophe might be useful for other
purposes in your transcr./orthogr. system.

Tim

On Monday, December 20, 2021 at 5:16:40 PM UTC-5, Ruud Harmsen via Google Groups <google@rudhar.com> wrote:
> On Monday, December 20, 2021 at 11:11:30 PM UTC+1, Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> > On Monday, December 20, 2021 at 5:04:13 PM UTC-5, Ruud Harmsen wrote:
> > > Mon, 20 Dec 2021 04:55:50 -0800 (PST): "Peter T. Daniels"
> > > <gram...@verizon.net> scribeva:
> > > >On Sunday, December 19, 2021 at 9:54:18 PM UTC-5, Ruud Harmsen wrote:
> > > >> Sun, 19 Dec 2021 20:53:58 +0100: wugi <wu...@scrlt.com> scribeva:
> > > >> >I don't support either camp, but how obscure can a statement be.
> > > >> >UKE short/long ~ AmE diphthong?
> > > >> >or UKE long ~ AmE diphthong??
> > > >> >If /few/ is not considered having a long /u:/ then it has no diphthong
> > > >> >either???
> > > >> >/jutiliti/ has no diphthong but /ju:z/ has????
> > > >> >Father has a long vowel, ergo a diphthong?!
> > > >> For forced symmetry, they posit an /h/ there, which of course isn't an
> > > >> [h], because English
> > > >No, *British* English.
> > > >> phonotactics don't allow that. /fahðer/. Only
> > > >> short vowels.
> > > >> >I'm clearly missing a pointe here.
> > > Yeah, right, American English really has syllable-final [h]. Note that
> > > I write [h], not /h/ in Americanist notation.
> > Where has anyone suggested that AmE has syllable-final [h]?
>
> You did. Just read your own nonsense and try to understand it. I can't.

I cannot locate something I never said. What are you misinterpreting this time?

> > > You're really hilarious sometimes. Can you, as a American, pronounce
> > > Mehmet and Zahra? Come on.
> > I know that people who haven't studied an "Oriental" language or the
> > history of the area can't. What do foreign names have to do with
> > anything? They also "can't" pronounce Van Gogh. So what?

No smart-ass answer here?

> > > >Clearly, but I can't tell what your latest problem is.

On Monday, December 20, 2021 at 5:19:27 PM UTC-5, DKleinecke wrote:
> On Monday, December 20, 2021 at 7:52:52 AM UTC-8, wugi wrote:
> > Op 20-12-2021 om 13:55 schreef Peter T. Daniels:
> > > On Sunday, December 19, 2021 at 9:54:18 PM UTC-5, Ruud Harmsen wrote:
> > >> Sun, 19 Dec 2021 20:53:58 +0100: wugi <wu...@scrlt.com> scribeva:
> > >>> I'm clearly missing a pointe here.
> > >
> > > Clearly, but I can't tell what your latest problem is.
> > If that applies to me, I don't see any direct relation between
> > long/short distinction (of what?) and diphthongs. ("short/long is the
> > British phoneticians' way of describing what AmE calls diphthongs.", PTD)
> >
> > Apart from the observation that long vowels (not all) tend to
> > diphthongize in English, any variety.
> > (Holland Dutch is mimicking it, with its own "long" oo and ee.)
> > (British English seeks some compensation by monophthising sounds like in
> > fire, wire, shower, flour.)
> Hum
>
> /fayr/ /wayr/ /shawr/ /flawr/

Note that you need (what SPE would call) a low-level rule to
make an approximant (/r, l/) syllabic after a diphthong. You
can choose to do that by inserting a shwa [@] before it or by
putting a "syllabic" diacritic below the [r] or [l].

That will drive crazy those who cannot imagine that even on
the phonetic level there can be alternative analyses.

Op 21-12-2021 om 11:28 schreef Tim Lang:
> On 20.12.2021 23:07, Ruud Harmsen wrote:
>
>>> Aha. Admittedly a Brits "lake" may sound hardly diphthongized, but
>>> nevertheless...
>>
>> Wrong. Very diphthongized, except in Scotland, Northern England,
>> Northern Ireland.
>
> Wow, highly interesting: Wugi has a ... "German" perception of the
> thing /e and e: instead of ej/. Most Germans, from Flensburg to

Where did you read that? My rendering would be /ej/ or even /e:j/ as I
wrote earlier. I just tried to see a reason for Brits having /e(:)/.

> Bolzano and Aachen to Vienna have this perception. ("Hee, ohkeh" :-))

--
guido wugi

On Tuesday, December 21, 2021 at 6:04:29 AM UTC-5, Tim Lang wrote:
> On 20.12.2021 23:03, Peter T. Daniels wrote:

(Oh, dear, there's a great deal of misinfromation in that spate of
words about English (in the mouths of Germans) but I can't let
lhis one go.)

[I can't find the weird transcription that was claimed for this word]

> >Where do they say "rainbow" that way?
>
> Midwest (approx.). E.g. the a capella group "Home Free" (at least two

Oy. Finally, after many years, I seem to have gotten Ruud to stop
citing sung lyrics as examples of the pronunciation of _anything_.

You need to know that singers are drilled endlessly in "distorting"
their vowels so that the words are intelligible when sung, and that
often means pronouncing them in ways they would never use in
speaking.

> of them utter rather rænboʊ, i.e., no /ej/ or /eɪ/ there. (I have no
> idea whether this is a typical AE phenomenon in some areas or if it
> is an influence from the languages of the ancestors of those people:
> German and Swedish.)

None of the above.

And it took me several occurrences to realize that your "AE" is what
we refer to here as "AmE." And "BE" must be "BrE."

> >>the 2nd (same) vowel. (As in other languages e.g. re- + words starting
> >>with e-; or in "co-operation, -operare".)
> >I think we have repeated vowels only in extremely learnèd words like
> >"oöcyte."
> >"Cooperate" is /kowap@reyt/.
>
> I had written "as in other languages" - vide supra - very well knowing
> that Anglos make of cooperate kəʊɒpəreɪt and kə(ʊ)ʌpəreɪt.

No, those are very much BrE. AmE knows how to pronounce [ow].

> >>Or [lāk], as in Webster, Bantam &c dictionaries (for decades).
> >No -- they only use backslashes, so as not to take a position '
> >on phonemicization. They use macrons for "long vowels,"
> >which are the vowels that "say their name"
> >>Where [ā] = IPA [eɪ] (or Daniel Jones [ei]), but [a] = [æ].
> >Each dictionary company can make its own choices. Usually they're
> >based on what M-W used in the 1850s (decades before IPA).
>
> Yes: Webster (Merriam-Webster) e.g. a Simon & Schuster "2nd college
> edition" 1980 as well as www.m-w.com _today_ have /ā/ for /eɪ, ej, ey/.

Merriam-Webster failed to protect its trademark, so anyone can stick
"Webster's" in its title. Nothing published by Simon & Schuster is in the
intellectual line of Merriam-Webster or obliged to maintain its standards
-- and doesn't have access to their lexicographic resources in Springfield,
Mass. (I once wrote to M-W to ask for the citation for an "earliest use"
date of a word -- antedating OED by a decade -- and got a prompt reply
with the citation and the source of the citation. The word was "grapheme."
Had a nice chat with the woman who answered.)

> The same in different editions of the Bantam thick as a brick paperbook
> AE dictionaries. All the other ones, esp. for BE, use the Daniel Jones
> i.e. IPA rendition either /ei/ or /eɪ/. (A bit strange: almost none
> /ej/, which would be 100% OK as well.)

Bantam is (was?) a paperback reprint publisher. It certainly is not the
source of whatever dictionary you are looking at.

> So, not quite "each dictionary company" "makes its own choices", but
> there is some system in the AE kind of phon.transcr. too. But /eɪ/
> is systematically showed this way (/ā/), never mixed up (e.g. /e:/).

Please. You are very confused. Did you miss the part about backslashes
to avoid claims of phonemicization? American dictionaries cover a wide
variety of dialects -- though BrE dictionaries seem to leave those matters
to "dialect dictionaries" in the tradition of Henry Sweet et al.

Op 20-12-2021 om 22:17 schreef Tim Lang:

Wugi:
>>> (Holland Dutch is mimicking it, with its own "long" oo and ee.)
>>> (British English seeks some compensation by monophthising sounds like in
>>> fire, wire, shower, flour.)
>
> How come? Can't NL-Dutch utter [aɪə, aɪəː, aɪɜː, ɔɪə, (...)]? Or even
> [ʌɪa, ʌɪɒ]. [ɪ = j] And [a,ʌ,ɒʊə / aʊa] (As in virtual any German
> dialect.) E.g. Feuer, Schauer ['fɔɪəː(r); 'ʃaʊəː(r)]. &c.

You're messing up my statements about Holland Dutch (busy
diphthongising) and Br English (busy monophthongising).

--
guido wugi

Op 20-12-2021 om 23:19 schreef DKleinecke:
> On Monday, December 20, 2021 at 7:52:52 AM UTC-8, wugi wrote:
>> Op 20-12-2021 om 13:55 schreef Peter T. Daniels:
>>> On Sunday, December 19, 2021 at 9:54:18 PM UTC-5, Ruud Harmsen wrote:
>>>> Sun, 19 Dec 2021 20:53:58 +0100: wugi <wu...@scrlt.com> scribeva:
>>>>> I'm clearly missing a pointe here.
>>>
>>> Clearly, but I can't tell what your latest problem is.
>> If that applies to me, I don't see any direct relation between
>> long/short distinction (of what?) and diphthongs. ("short/long is the
>> British phoneticians' way of describing what AmE calls diphthongs.", PTD)
>>
>> Apart from the observation that long vowels (not all) tend to
>> diphthongize in English, any variety.
>> (Holland Dutch is mimicking it, with its own "long" oo and ee.)
>> (British English seeks some compensation by monophthising sounds like in
>> fire, wire, shower, flour.)
>
> Hum
>
> /fayr/ /wayr/ /shawr/ /flawr/
>
Yes, but listen to, say, David Attenborough and you get /fa:/ and
/sha:/, with a lingering on the vowel, as if trying to make it two
syllables.

--
guido wugi

On Tuesday, December 21, 2021 at 6:22:08 AM UTC-5, Tim Lang wrote:
> On 20.12.2021 23:02, DKleinecke wrote:

> >I imagine all alphabets to be trying to be a one letter per phoneme
> >systems. Some are more successful than others. Of course if one
> >is borrowing an alphabet rather than inventing your own the fit is
> >much harder to achieve.
>
> Too late: the Brits should have invented an adapted one 500-800 years
> ago. What has happened: whole lotta "frozen" renderings have been in
> use, such as "k/night, enough, laugh, dove, blood" whereas pronuncia-
> tions changed several times long ago; and by means of German & al.

You may fail to realize that people flocked to London from all over
Britain, bringing with them not only their local dialects but also their centuries-
old local orthographic traditions, all of which fed into what eventually
became the standard orthography. We have no holograph ms. of Chaucer
(1400), but when Caxton introduced printing to England (1475), importing
Flemish typesetters (who also brought with them their own orthographic
traditions from Ghent, which is why we have h in the "ghost" words), he
had a wide variety both of dialects and of orthographies to choose from and
famously wondered about what to use for the plural of "egg." There was
no standard at all for spelling until nearly 300 years later (Johnson's
Dictionary, 1755). You can study the development of English spelling
inn two ways: Dobson's massive *English Pronunciation 1500-1700* (1968)
or in the recent statistical approach used by Berg and Aronoff, who actually
count the spellings of affixes from the beginning of English until 1800 or so.

> Germanic dialects (by comparing) one can imagine how the (slightly
> adapted) old writing habits still in use was a valid transcription
> for the then English usage of the 1100-1500 time periods (e.g. German
> Nacht /nʌχt/, genug: in the Low German variant: jenuch /je'nʊχ/, Duwe
> /'du:və/ (standard G.: Taube /'tɑʊbə/), Blut /blu:t/)..

There was a massive Romance (Norman French) component in the
vocabulary, which woud stymie German(ic) orthography.

> >I know stress is phonemic in English but my system is defective in
> >having no orthographic way to mark it.
>
> How about this kind of apostrophe: "'"? For which modern keyboards
> have an extra key (usually neighboring the "Enter"/"Return" key).
> Or applying an accent upon the vowel of the relevant syllable (as in
> Spanish) in order to avoid ambiguous reading situations.

Whatever you think is alongside the Enter key on a German keyboard
is lost above. David comes from the era of typewriters. American typewriters
do not provide for those diacritics that clutter up other languages.

On Tuesday, December 21, 2021 at 10:03:20 AM UTC-5, wugi wrote:
> Op 20-12-2021 om 23:19 schreef DKleinecke:
> > On Monday, December 20, 2021 at 7:52:52 AM UTC-8, wugi wrote:

> >> (British English seeks some compensation by monophthising sounds like in
> >> fire, wire, shower, flour.)
> > Hum
> > /fayr/ /wayr/ /shawr/ /flawr/
>
> Yes, but listen to, say, David Attenborough and you get /fa:/ and
> /sha:/, with a lingering on the vowel, as if trying to make it two
> syllables.

Sir David represents the speech of not quite a century ago.

You would do better to listen to Prince William -- though he too
is getting on in years (not Prince Harry, because he probably
already shows, all unawares, noticeably American features).

On Tue, 21 Dec 2021, wugi wrote:

> Where did you read that? My rendering would be /ej/ or even /e:j/ as I wrote
> earlier. I just tried to see a reason for Brits having /e(:)/.

If this is meant to be American pseudo-phonetics, I cannot comment.
I simple can’t read that.

If this is meant to be IPA or a similar code (e.g. SAMPA), I do not find
/e:/ a suitable representation. I do not think Brits pronounce en:'bait'
exactly the same as Germans pronounce de:'Beet'.

COD has /ɛɪ/ which is much closer to en:'bait'.

--
Helmut Richter