pronunciation of "legacy"

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How do you (only native speakers) say "legacy"

with a short e
1
50%
with a long e
1
50%
 
Total votes: 2

jotham
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pronunciation of "legacy"

Post by jotham » Wed Jun 08, 2011 4:07 pm

I was caught in error today, and when that happens, I want to know why. All dictionaries pronounce legacy with a short e. But I've grown up for some reason pronouncing it with a long e. I wonder if this is my Kansas accent or if I just picked this up from reading the word wrongly rather than listening to it correctly. I know this is a common mistake when people say often with a t (which I also do and try to correct.)

I also realize that dictionaries will provide only one pronunciation of a word, like the East Coast variation for pen, though we MidWesterners and Californians say pen and pin alike. So I can't be clear whether or not this is dialect.

Does anyone know the answer to this offhand?
Or does anyone know if there are corpora or other search engines that can help identify accents or dialects of certain words?

I've scoured the Internet as far as I know, and so far have to assume that I'm uniquely wrong.

fluffyhamster
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Post by fluffyhamster » Wed Jun 08, 2011 10:39 pm

Perhaps you're not getting the stress quite on the first syllable? Anyway, FWIW, I pronounce it as ending in /i/ ('happy') rather than /i:/ ('sheep'), as per the Longman's guide to the IPA, and the pronunciation given in the OALD (the LDOCE online doesn't appear to display the IPA in its actual entries):
http://www.ldoceonline.com/images/665/pron_image006.png
http://www.oxfordadvancedlearnersdictio ... ary/legacy

Regarding regional differences in pronunciation, have you tried Googling 'dialect maps'? You might also like to try searching for something like 'parallel corpora of dialect(al) regional variation in America'.

jotham
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Post by jotham » Fri Jun 10, 2011 4:54 am

fluffyhamster wrote:Perhaps you're not getting the stress quite on the first syllable? Anyway, FWIW, I pronounce it as ending in /i/ ('happy') rather than /i:/ ('sheep'), as per the Longman's guide to the IPA, and the pronunciation given in the OALD (the LDOCE online doesn't appear to display the IPA in its actual entries):
http://www.ldoceonline.com/images/665/pron_image006.png
http://www.oxfordadvancedlearnersdictio ... ary/legacy
I'm not sure what you mean. So you pronounce it with a short i, like ligacy? Should I have included a third option on the poll?

In my dialect, I don't think there is a difference between the y in happy and ee in sheep.
Regarding regional differences in pronunciation, have you tried Googling 'dialect maps'? You might also like to try searching for something like 'parallel corpora of dialect(al) regional variation in America'.
Thanks, that helped me go off on another branch to find experts I can ask.

fluffyhamster
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Post by fluffyhamster » Fri Jun 10, 2011 6:20 am

As 'a long e' isn't in the phonemic inventory of symbols given in e.g. the Longman's pronunciation scheme, I honestly thought you were referring in a rough n ready non-technical way to the final phoneme in the word 'legacy'. (Using IPA wherever possible is always best/unambiguous!). But as it's now clearly the first vowel sound that you were on about, I've only ever heard and pronounced it as /e/, never as a longer sound (/3:/?), but do bear in mind that I'm British.

jotham
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Post by jotham » Fri Jun 10, 2011 9:27 am

fluffyhamster wrote:As 'a long e' isn't in the phonemic inventory of symbols given in e.g. the Longman's pronunciation scheme, I honestly thought you were referring in a rough n ready non-technical way to the final phoneme in the word 'legacy'. (Using IPA wherever possible is always best/unambiguous!). But as it's now clearly the first vowel sound that you were on about, I've only ever heard and pronounced it as /e/, never as a longer sound (/3:/?), but do bear in mind that I'm British.
Not having studied any pronunciation system formally, and having used several different types when learning various languages, I'm only in the habit of using the phonetic system taught to me in grade school, ha.

Metamorfose
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Post by Metamorfose » Fri Jun 10, 2011 10:03 am

I'll assume short e to sound like the vowel in ten and long e like the vowel sound in teen.

You should check if the change short e to long e and/or short e to short i is systematical in your speech and/or speech community. It seems something that goes on in your speech community as I can tell. This phenomenum is a kind of vowel raising because it looks like that short e's become long e's (legacy to something like leegacy) or short i (neutralisation of pen and pin)

Are there any other words that in standard American English is short e but you end up using long e or short i?

And often with /t/ isn't historically more accurate than without it?

José

fluffyhamster
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Post by fluffyhamster » Fri Jun 10, 2011 12:49 pm

Like I say, it would help if you indicated what this 'long e' of yours/your pronunciation of 'legacy' sounds like, Jotham (refer to the Longman link I provided earlier if need be - it has guide words e.g. /3:/ as in bird). I've assumed it's /3:/ (closer to the /e/ of the standard pronunciation of the first vowel phoneme in 'legacy'), but José reckons (I think! LOL) that it is or could be /i:/ (which would like I've said be closer to the /i/ versus /i:/ -y ending that I was first contemplating, rather than to the initial vowel phoneme in 'legacy'). That is, even with all the Great Ewok Vowel Shifts or whatever's been going on, there is surely too great a qualitative difference between /e/ and /i:/ for you to have been using the latter in place of the former, right? :o (/3:/ though I could just about understand). Still, perhaps you've been analogizing (wrongly LOL) on the basis of something like the the 'leg'=/li:g/ part of 'legal'?

jotham
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Post by jotham » Fri Jun 10, 2011 1:41 pm

fluffyhamster wrote:Like I say, it would help if you indicated what this 'long e' of yours/your pronunciation of 'legacy' sounds like, Jotham (refer to the Longman link I provided earlier if need be - it has guide words e.g. /3:/ as in bird). I've assumed it's /3:/ (closer to the /e/ of the standard pronunciation of the first vowel phoneme in 'legacy'), but José reckons (I think! LOL) that it is or could be /i:/ (which would like I've said be closer to the /i/ versus /i:/ -y ending that I was first contemplating, rather than to the initial vowel phoneme in 'legacy'). That is, even with all the Great Ewok Vowel Shifts or whatever's been going on, there is surely too great a qualitative difference between /e/ and /i:/ for you to have been using the latter in place of the former, right? :o (/3:/ though I could just about understand). Still, perhaps you've been analogizing (wrongly LOL) on the basis of something like the the "leg" of 'legal'?
Yah, I pronounced it like /i:/ ('sheep'). And perhaps I did confuse something like legality with legacy.

I guess next step, I'll need to ask my parents and relatives how they pronounce it.

jotham
Posts: 509
Joined: Thu Nov 16, 2006 12:51 am

Post by jotham » Fri Jun 10, 2011 1:47 pm

Metamorfose wrote:I'll assume short e to sound like the vowel in ten and long e like the vowel sound in teen.

You should check if the change short e to long e and/or short e to short i is systematical in your speech and/or speech community. It seems something that goes on in your speech community as I can tell. This phenomenum is a kind of vowel raising because it looks like that short e's become long e's (legacy to something like leegacy) or short i (neutralisation of pen and pin)

Are there any other words that in standard American English is short e but you end up using long e or short i?

And often with /t/ isn't historically more accurate than without it?

José
Yes, we definitely say pen and pin alike where I'm from. I'm not even going to try to change that. I prefer to pronounce them that way. But I'm not aware of any inconsistencies between the ee versus e.

jotham
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Joined: Thu Nov 16, 2006 12:51 am

Post by jotham » Sat Jun 11, 2011 2:01 pm

My mom said they pronounce it like everyone else, so I've decided that I'm just wrong. I read the word many more times than I'd ever heard it enough times to guide my pronunciation. Well, time to practice it now. See how many sentences I can make a day using the word. Not something you use every day.....I can understand how I could have read the word more than hearing it.

fluffyhamster
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Post by fluffyhamster » Sat Jun 11, 2011 3:05 pm

Isn't there much about e.g. 'Bush's legacy' in the US media? (Probably not as much as there is about Blair's legacy though - I Googled the two and the results were 25,300,000 to "only" 4,870,000). Then, there was a dodgy 1979 horror film called The Legacy that must've helped inform my linguistic development. :D

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