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Jan 11, 2017 at 23:38 answer added herisson timeline score: 0
Dec 6, 2014 at 14:15 history edited tchrist
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Feb 3, 2014 at 22:59 answer added nefarious timeline score: 2
Jan 20, 2014 at 2:14 comment added Peter Shor @Julian: the 'a' in temporary, military, extraordinary is pronounced like "merry" in AmE, and not like the British pronunciation. This is one BrE/AmE difference.
Jan 19, 2014 at 9:16 answer added Julian timeline score: 0
Jan 19, 2014 at 9:04 comment added Julian As a British English speaker, the a in temporary doesn't sound like the others. It is more variable between speakers and stress levels and often sounds more like the e in very. This word is also often shortened and can sound like "tempry". - Sorry don't know IPA well enough to use it.
Dec 2, 2013 at 17:16 comment added Peter Shor Most Americans pronounce carry as /ˈkɛri/ and not /ˈkæri/, while /ˈkæri/ is the usual British pronunciation; that's what confused me. I don't know why Oxford Learner's Dictionary doesn't give both pronunciations for carry; this is what Merriam-Webster does (although they don't use IPA, unfortunately).
Dec 2, 2013 at 17:05 comment added nefarious @PeterShor: I'm relying only on the Native American English pronunciations from oald8.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/dictionary/nefarious In the post I've been using both the symbol /e/ and /ɛ/ as I did not want to rely on a single source to illustrate "a" becoming "something else than /æ/ or /eɪ/" in dictionaries even though all phonics books suggest only those two realizations. Then, I guess, the phonics books are for supporting native children who learn the pronunciation (vocalization) before reading and distinctions at this level are not important.
Dec 2, 2013 at 15:55 comment added Peter Shor @Janus: I actually don't know whether /dæɹ/ would be noticed by Americans, since most of them merge merge /dæɹ/, /der/ and /dɛr/, and they can't hear the difference between marry, Mary, and merry. None of them pronounce dare like that, though.
Dec 2, 2013 at 15:55 comment added Janus Bahs Jacquet @nefarious, it does not matter whether you pronounce your name here as [nəˈfæɹiəs] or [nəˈfɛ(ə)ɹiəs]: both sound natural and are common. Pronouncing ‘share’ and ‘dare’ as [ʃ/dæɹ] (AmE) or [ʃ/dæː] (BrE), however, would probably be noticed, because the raising in those words is, as far as I know, more or less universal in all dialects: they are uniformly [ʃɛɹ] and [dɛː], respectively.
Dec 2, 2013 at 15:55 comment added John Lawler It would be easier if you settled on one dialect; everybody understands most dialects, and it will help your consistency. If you decide on American English, there is a very good English pronouncing dictionary -- Kenyon and Knott -- that only gives the spelling and the phonemic pronunciation. It's very short. Here's a sample of the system.
Dec 2, 2013 at 15:44 comment added Peter Shor You seem to be using both British and American dictionaries. These two dialects have completely different rules for pronunciation of vowels before 'r' (and note that it varies between different American dialects, and between different British dialects).
Dec 2, 2013 at 15:28 comment added nefarious Thank you. My real purpose is memorizing the pronunciation of words as given in a dictionary but my brain is breaking down at this level of distinction. Likely I should not bother as I'm not able to consistently reproduce the specific phonemes anyways. And if there is that level of variation between native speakers then it should not matter.
Dec 2, 2013 at 15:15 review First posts
Dec 2, 2013 at 19:59
Dec 2, 2013 at 15:09 comment added Janus Bahs Jacquet Trying to find consistency between English graphemes and phonemes is an exercise in futility, and quite likely to make you lose your hair. There is a tendency for the phoneme /a/ to be raised to [ɛ] or diphthongised to something like [ɛɐ] before /r/ in stressed syllables in monosyllables and in front of a higher vowel. But it’s only a tendency, and it’s in no way consistent (e.g., ‘sparse’ and ‘scarce’). And of course different speakers of different dialects do this to different degrees. I have [æ] in ‘nefarious’ and [ə] or [ɐ] in ‘subsidiary’, for example.
Dec 2, 2013 at 14:59 history asked nefarious CC BY-SA 3.0