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From: pardoej@lonnds.ml.com (Julian Pardoe LADS LDN X1428)
Subject: Re: Stressed schwa
Message-ID: <DvpLq1.9wr@tigadmin.ml.com>
Sender: usenet@tigadmin.ml.com (News Account)
Reply-To: pardoej@lonnds.ml.com
Organization: Merrill Lynch Europe
References: <32031483.5E5B@pacific.net.sg>
Date: Tue, 6 Aug 1996 09:15:37 GMT
Lines: 41

In article <32031483.5E5B@pacific.net.sg>, "Chris G. Perrott" <cperrott@pacific.net.sg> writes:
-->P. K. W. Tan wrote:
-->> 
-->> Peter Hullah (Peter.Hullah@eurocontrol.fr) wrote:
-->> 
-->> : So we have:
-->> :  /bUk/, /gUd/ and /pUt/ in the UK and the US ("book" etc.)
-->> :  /bVk/, /gVt/ and /pVt/ in the UK and some parts of the US ("buck" etc.)
-->> :  /b@k/, /g@t/ and /p@t/ in other parts of the US ("buck" etc.)
-->> 
-->> : Pete
-->> 
-->> I think some Northern English speakers also use the [@] in words
-->> like <bus> and <cut>, whilst other Northern English speakers have
-->> [U] in these words.
-->> 
-->> Peter Tan
-->> Singapore
-->
-->No, in the North of England they say 'bus' like 'book', 'cut' like 'put'.
-->I've concluded that in the UK there is a stressed schwa and in the US
-->there is a stressed schwa. They're just used in different words and
-->they don't sound the same :-) !

In British RP the sound nearest to a "stressed schwa" is the sound in "fern".
In the most common IPA transcription the symbol for this is a turned "open E"
plus a length mark, for which the ASCII/IPA symbol seems to be [V":].  Although
it isn't as far as I can tell just a "long schwa" (the tongue is lower in the
mouth) most RP speakers would probably agree that it is.

I resent being told by Americans that the sound in RP "but" is a schwa.  It
sounds nothing like it!!!

The trouble is that with all this squabbling and anglo-american misunder-
standing I still haven't managed to work out what phonemes exist in standard
American English (if there is such a thing) and how they correspond to the
RP phonemes.

-- jP --


