Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!bonnie.concordia.ca!uunet!spool.mu.edu!mips!daver!zorch!xanthian From: xanthian@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG (Kent Paul Dolan) Newsgroups: comp.fonts Subject: Regional vowel counts in American English Re: Umlaute [was: naive (...question about uncial...) ] Message-ID: <1991May26.160855.7374@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG> Date: 26 May 91 16:08:55 GMT References: <9864@idunno.Princeton.EDU> <1991May23.083815.12755@pbs.org> Organization: SF-Bay Public-Access Unix Lines: 38 [Hey, folks, it isn't _that_ hard to give a discussion an appropriate subject line, really; "umlaute" indeed.] holley@sono.uucp (Greg Holley) writes: > btiffany@pbs.org (Bruce) writes: >> OK, five vowels and 14 vowel sounds. >> But if you're talking about the sounds vowels >> make, rather than the vowels themselves, I can't >> believe there are only 14. There must be many, >> many more. Maybe Peter Jennings uses only 14, but >> if you go to Maine, and then to the Appalachians >> of southwestern Virginia and eastern Kentucky, >> and then to Upstate New York (where they have a >> pretty unique way of pronouncing the sound made >> in words like "about" and "boat"), and then to >> Georgia and Alabama, you'll compile a lot more >> than 14 sounds! Our five vowels truly have many >> talents! >> But there are 5 vowels. :-) > I'd also guess that regional accents tend to > replace one vowel with another, rather than adding > a vowel, so that while English as it is spoken > around the world may include more than 14 vowels, > any native speaker would use 14 or fewer vowels. Wish I could give a reference, but no go. I remember reading, however, that in the Georgia/Alabama area, linguists/phoneticists can reliably distinguish 22 vowel sounds in use by the same speakers. It is only the clipped-speech New Englander that must live with an impoverished 14; I think your hypothesis fails. ;-) Kent, the man from xanth.