Job Discussion Forums

[sidjameson]

My student has asked me how to spell these words that he has made up for a project phonetically.
I am bad enough with proper spelling let alone this malarky. So if someone could give a hand many thanks would be in order.

deeb
terol
willer
convit
wittel
gickle
jeel
adpost
forline
lomic
couwell

[anninhk]

You can look in any good dictionary for their pronunciation chart and work it out - or your student can.

[markle]

The way I understand it you would at least have to have some idea how these words were actually pronounced. If they follow conventional English spelling patterns then most are pretty straight forward but not all

[wildchild]

um...why are you doing your student's work for him?

how is your student gonna learn anything if you're doing all the work?

[Stephen Jones]

As your student made the words up, he's going to be the only one who knows how to pronounce them!

deeb, willer, gickle and jeel can only be pronounced one way. The others have varying pronunciations, both regarding phonemes and stress.

The 'r' at the end of 'willer' will of course be pronounced if there is liason with an initial vowel in the subsequent word, but not otherwise.

[MO39]

[Justin Trullinger]

I would tell the student to go "ghoti" if I were you...


Best,

Justin

[johnslat]

Dear Justin,
Oh, Pshaw (or would it be Oh, Gbshaw?)
Regards,
John

[guty]

Are you sure about that MO39?

I would think that in the majority of cases the last syllable in

'willer'

would use the schwa /ə/ for the last syllable, rather than the vowel sound followed by an /r/. At least it would when used as a part of normal speech, if not in a test of the pronunciation of random made-up words designed to test the teacher's patience.

Would this not be the case in the US too?

[Justin Trullinger]

HArd to tell the intent of "willer," as it is a made up word-

In most parts of the US, though, an "er" ending is rhotic. (Meaning that the "r" is pronounced.) THis is true of many words which in the UK get "schwa-ed." (Teacher, worker, mother, father all have a pronounced "r" where I'm from.)

This isn't true in some southern states, and probably in some other areas I've forgotten. (Anybody here from Boston? Please comment...)


Best,
justin

[MO39]

Thanks for backing me up, Justin, and even teaching me a new word, "rhotic". Of course, in some parts of New England, which includes Boston, the final "er" becomes a schwa, as it does in the South. But in most of the US, the final "er" is pronounced as such.

[phantombedwetter]

This
"Malarky"
Is
Part
Of
Your
Job
Why
Don't
You
Learn
It
Yourself
?

[Stephen Jones]

Actually, rhoticity in New England forms the basis of the most famous social linguistic experiment ever.

In the late 1950s Labov sent his researchers into Macey's to ask people where a certain department was (the answer was 'on the third floor').

It was found that whether the 'r' in 'third' was pronounced depended on how well-dressed and well spoken the person who asked the question was. This proved two things; firstly that people chose the socially prestigious variety when they think they are talking to social superiors, and secondly, that the rhotic variety was now the prestige variety, which was a change from the situation fifty years previously.

Of course the pronunciation of vowel phonemes varies greatly over geographical areas. One of the things I have to do for my job is record sequences of minimal pairs for the CALL lab. On one occasion I asked an American colleague with a very clear accent to record a series of words like cot and caught, leaving the student to guess which vowel sound he had heard. Unfortunately my friend's accent was such that not even I could decide which phoneme he was uttering!

A week ago I need to practice the at/art pairset. In order to avoid the same problem as before I needed to find a colleague who didn't pronounce the rhotic version, which would have made it obvious what word was being said. All my English colleagues had gone home, so I resorted to going into offices, pointing to my arm, and asking people what they called it. "Sleeve, sweat shirt, emerald green, skinny" were some of the answers! Eventually I found a South African colleage who pronounced 'arm' without the 'r' and we could go off and do two minutes taping after I'd just spent fifteen minutes persuading most of my colleagues I had truly gone round the bend!

[markle]

I remember a scene in the early Will Smith movie "Six Degrees of Separation" where Smith's character, a street hustler was being taught how to pronounce 'beer' so he could pass himself off as a educated gentlemen, which he eventually did. It was something I had not realised earlier.