# Long OO vs short OO in English



## hadronic

Hello,

Could someone provide me with a minimal pair in English constrating between long "oo" and short "oo" ? Like _leave _vs. _live _for [i:] vs. _/

My point is actually that I expect there's none, unless from secondary formation. Indeed, after the GVS, we have :
- *[u:] ==> [au]  (house)
- *[o:] ==> [u:]  (food) (1)
- * ==> [ʌ] (cut)   (2) 

(1) Later, [u:] got sometimes shortened, impredictibly, on a word-by-word basis (ex: good [gud] vs food [fu:d]).
(2) Some * failed to undergo this change : push

So, the only way to get a [u:]/ minimal pair, would be to find a pair like *poosh/push, *poot/put,  i.e., an historical *[o:]/* with an *[o:]==>[u:] that didn't undergo shortening, and a * that didn't undergo the [ʌ] change.

One other way would be to find a secondary [u:] formation, like in fruit, cruise,... constrasting with either a shortened [u:] (good) or an inchanged  (push),  so giving hypothetic pairs like fruit vs. *froot [frut], or fruit vs. *frut [frut].

Any true examples ?_


----------



## Hulalessar

How about _should _v _shooed_?


----------



## Alxmrphi

[fʊl] <- full
[fu:l] <- fool

[pʊl] <- pull
[pu:l] <- pool

In my variety of English anyway.
You are talking about FOOT and GOOSE, right?


----------



## hadronic

Great examples, thank you ! But I guess there aren't so many, compared to other long / short pairs in English. 

So my next question : what about the perceived phonemicity of [u:] vs.  for native speakers of English ? I mean, when a foreigner speaks while mixing up long and short _oo_'s, how does it affect comprehension compared to mixing up [i:] and _, like saying beat for bit, seen for sin ?_


----------



## berndf

You are concentrating to much on the length difference. The more important difference is between /u/ and /ʊ/ and between /i/ and /I/: /liv/ would be understood as "leave" and not as "live" (living in a French speaking area, I've heard this mistake many times) and /bit/ would be understood as "beat" and not as "bit". Likewise /ful/ would be perceived as a funny pronunciation of "fool" but not as "full".

"Good" can be pronounced long and short: /gʊd/ or (stressed) /gʊ:d/ but never ever /gud/ as you transcribed it. I think, the length has become a secondary characteristic and sometimes varies with stress. The main distinction between the different pronunciations of "oo" is quality, not quantity.

I think the real question is: Why did ME /o:/ ("oo") sometimes become /u/ and sometimes /ʊ/? I wonder myself. "Moon" and "food" where originally two syllable words (ME: "mone", "fode") while "good" and "foot" were single syllable (ME: "god" and "fot"). Maybe there is a relation, I don't know.


----------



## Alxmrphi

I should have been able to work that out, assuming it was being clipped by a fortis [t] or something along those lines.

I thought hadronic's  was just shorthand for [ʊ] and we were comparing [ʊ] and [u:] (which has a very obvious length distinction to me). But after reading your post it seems the distinction is about [ʊ] (FOOT) and  (tensed FOOT).

Is that right?



> Likewise /ful/ would be perceived as a funny pronunciation of "fool" but not as "full".


I would agree with that.
I'm not sure how this would affect dialects that have undergone the foot-goose merger though, I think it might sound normal to those speakers.
[Edit]: Also, speakers of the full-fool merger, which affects (ironically ) those exact words we're talking about, i.e. /ʊ/ and /u:/ before /l/.


----------



## Forero

Most "short _oo_" words are monosyllabic. And the minimal pairs seem to follow certain patterns (e.g. past tenses, _oo_ spelled as _u_):

_who'd_ _hood
wooed would
__cooed could
shooed_/_shoed should
gooed good
_(_route root_, in some places, e.g. Pennsylvania)
_poot _(= "fart") _put
__suit soot
__Luke look
__nuke nook
kook cook
gook_ (long _oo_, derogatory for "Chinese", I think) _gook_ (short _oo_, "sticky stuff")

Foreigners usually seem to be saying "long _oo_" for both, and this does make them hard to understand. We have to stop and remember what they are substituting for.


----------



## berndf

Alxmrphi said:


> I should have been able to work that out,  assuming it was being clipped by a fortis [t] or something along those  lines.
> 
> I thought hadronic's  was just shorthand for [ʊ] and we were  comparing [ʊ] and [u:] (which has a very obvious length distinction to  me). But after reading your post it seems the distinction is about [ʊ]  (FOOT) and  (tensed FOOT).
> 
> Is that right?


In your examples, Alex, it is really just a short/long issue. Hadron's question was specifically about "oo" which is theoretically a long vowel. In actual fact all four combinations can be observed (/u/, /u:/, /ʊ/ and /ʊ:/). This always puzzled me and I don't really have an explanation.


----------



## berndf

Forero said:


> Foreigners usually seem to be saying "long _oo_" for both, and this does make them hard to understand. We have to stop and remember what they are substituting for.


In Chancery English, i.e. just before the Great Vowel Shift started they were all /o:/. The question is: why did then develop differently.


----------



## Forero

berndf said:


> In Chancery English, i.e. just before the Great Vowel Shift started they were all /o:/. The question is: why did then develop differently.


I think they were more like /oː/ and /ɔː/, but perhaps distributed a little differently.


----------



## berndf

To my knowledge, in ME /oː/ and /ɔː/ were written identically, _mone_ /mo:nə/ and _stone _/stɔːnə/. But only /o:/ became "oo" in Chancery English which is the base for ModE spelling. Please correct me, if I am wrong.


----------



## Forero

berndf said:


> To my knowledge, in ME /oː/ and /ɔː/ were written identically, _mone_ /mo:nə/ and _stone _/stɔːnə/. But only /o:/ became "oo" in Chancery English which is the base for ModE spelling. Please correct me, if I am wrong.


This is probably right. _Stone_ got the "long _o_", and _mone_ the "long _oo_". And the "short _oo_" in Modern English only happens where "short _i_" (as in _sit_) can, never at the end of a syllable.


----------



## Alxmrphi

> And the "short _oo_" in Modern English only happens where "short _i_" (as in _sit_) can, never at the end of a syllable.


Yeah, KIT [I] and FOOT [ʊ] are lax vowels / checked vowels and can't exist in open syllables in English.
Regarding _stone,_ when did it get this pronunciation? I know it was _stan_ in OE, just curious when it went to /stɔːnə/ <slash> /stoːnə/.


----------



## hadronic

Sorry for my lack of clarity (the question wasn't clear to me neither I think ). All of your understandings are fine, it just shows the complexity of the thing.




berndf said:


> In actual fact all four combinations can be observed (/u/, /u:/, /ʊ/ and /ʊ:/).



For my purpose, I will posit that only /ʊ/ and /u:/ are used in English, in a non fool-full or foot-goose merger dialect of it. Stressed or emotional /ʊ:/ is considered out of scope, and I keep /u/ as the French realization of the two English phonemes.

First, you all acknowledge that (French) /u/ is more readily understood as /u:/ rather than /ʊ/, even though it lacks the length feature. That's pretty much a part of the answer to my question : in your interior phonemic representation of English, you do have an /ʊ/ - /u:/  opposition of some sort.

My question is actually : if I neutralize the /ʊ/ - /u:/ opposition, realizing it either /u/, /u:/, /ʊ/ or /ʊ:/, or even, /ʉ/ or /ɯ/, long or short, how bad does it affect your understanding ?

Sure, you already gave a list of some minimal pairs, but you will admit that they involves quite uncommon pieces of vocabulary, unlike the _leave-live_ opposition. So, most of the _oo-_word of English will exist only in one unique version, one unique concrete realization of that /U/ archi-phoneme : /ʊ/ or /u:/.

So if you hear /hu:k/, how difficult is it for you to figure out it's actually _hook_, given that /hu:k/ doesn't exist, and more, _cannot _exist, as /hʊk/ already occupied the /hUk/ archi-syllable. And furthermore, English orthography doesn't provide obvious orthographic convention even though someone wanted to create the word /hu:k/. You just cannot write it. And with good reason, English orthography represents pre-GVS English, and this /ʊ/ - /u:/ opposition is a "recent" feature of English.

I don't deny the lists of pairs you gave, but lots of them are secondary formations (_who'd, gooed,..._), some are due to the _dew_-_do_ merger (_nuke, _and maybe also _suit _and _Luke _(?) ), that doesn't make up a consistent  ensemble. And if ever you happen to have that /ʊ/ - /u:/ opposition hardcoded in your brain more I would think, I doubt it would come from this kind of pairs. Obviously, you would have created this opposition in your brain in the absence of any such minimal pairs, actually, just based on the _good_ - _food _relation, which is not a minimal pair. And this, would be unique among all languages I know.


----------



## Alxmrphi

If we're trying to find archiphonemic relationships, I think we need to look at words with pronunciations that differ yet are perfectly comprehensible to speakers (like me). So far we've only focused on differences, which do exist but I don't at this point think it convinces me that the difference can be neutralised that well, and maybe this is exactly your question.

Going back to:


> how bad does it affect understanding ?


It really is (at least for me) dependent on the exact sound in the word, as berndf pointed out before, having a stressed FOOT pronunciation of the word 'full' actually renders the interpretation impossible for me, because all I can hear is a variant of 'fool', because the quality is that different (even if the length is the same.

What neutralised archiphonemic relationships can you suggest that involve these 4-6 sounds?


----------



## hadronic

In a sense, I think that the fact that this "allophony" is not predictable / not context dependent, helped in producing the impression they are two actual phonemes of the language.


----------



## hadronic

I'm not sure to get all of what you say in your first paragraph above.



Alxmrphi said:


> It really is (at least for me) dependent on the exact sound in the word, as berndf pointed out before, having a stressed FOOT pronunciation of the word 'full' actually renders the interpretation impossible for me, because all I can hear is a variant of 'fool', because the quality is that different (even if the length is the same.



This is because you take here the full/fool example, that is one of the very few examples I admit. Rather, take the example of */hu:k/ that does not exist.
For example, if I say */blIk/ for _bleak_, you would have a hard time to recognize the word, EVEN if _*blick _as a word doesn't exist as such in English. It's just because it _could_ exist, and as a matter of fact, you don't deny its existence and try to go in a wrong direction (in the first few seconds after hearing the word). I posit that this phenomenon cannot exist for */hu:k/ .


----------



## Alxmrphi

I've just had a look at this page, and found out a lot of stuff I didn't know before 

So* /o:/* changed in all types of "oo" words (food, took, blood, room) to* /u:/* in the 17th century, then the shortening happened before voiced plosives, before the foot-strut split, then the foot-strut split in Southern English became inactive and *then* the /u:/ shortening before _voiceless_ plosives took place, which explains the distinction why even RP speakers don't have STRUT in words like book/took, because the /u:/ shortening affected the earlier phonetic environment, and only applied to the reduced  words.

That makes some of what we've been talking about a lot clearer for me because these sound changes of back vowels I haven't really looked into that much but I'm glad I posted here now 



> I posit that this phenomenon cannot exist for */hu:k/ .


Actually, my dialect allows this and it's a common pronunciation of "hook".
The site I linked to above actually contains the answer to this, when it talks about Irish English and the influx of Irish immigrants has had a profound effect on the speakers pronunciation of my dialect. For example both my parents both say /ku:k/ and /kʊk/ for "cook" (and when people like to do impressions of other speakers in my area it's very often by saying 'cook book' (/ku:k bu:k/).




> For example, if I say */blIk/ for _bleak_, you would have a hard time to recognize the word, EVEN if _*blick _as a word doesn't exist as such in English. It's just because it _could_  exist, and as a matter of fact, you don't deny its existence and try to  go in a wrong direction (in the first few seconds after hearing the  word).


I agree with this.
Even with_ blick_ not being a word, I still would find it hard to realise you were talking about _bleak_. In that sense, I'm more inclined to agree that this doesn't happen as much with back vowels because I'm used to certain variants of this phoneme being in free  variation where I am from. 

For me /u:/ (and to an extent /u/) in "oo" words like "hook" and "cook" (and "book") are variants and I always get the correct meanings.
However, they sound quite different to me, but in that sense for me they are archiphonemic.


----------



## hadronic

berndf said:


> I think the real question is: Why did ME /o:/ ("oo") sometimes become /u/ and sometimes /ʊ/? I wonder myself. "Moon" and "food" where originally two syllable words (ME: "mone", "fode") while "good" and "foot" were single syllable (ME: "god" and "fot"). Maybe there is a relation, I don't know.



Counter-examples :
*- *mood /mu:d/*
Origin: *
bef. 900;  ME; OE *mōd*  mind, spirit; courage; c. G Mut,  Goth mōths  courage, ON mōthr  anger 
- foot /fʊt/
*Origin: *
bef. 900;  ME; OE *fōt*;  c. G Fuss;  akin to L pēs  (s. ped- ), Gk poús  (s. pod- )

Both are mono-syllabic, with long close o, and one developped into long _oo, _the other one into short _oo._


----------



## berndf

hadronic said:


> Counter-examples :
> *- *mood /mu:d/*
> Origin: *
> bef. 900;  ME; OE *mōd*  mind, spirit; courage; c. G Mut,  Goth mōths  courage, ON mōthr  anger
> - foot /fʊt/
> *Origin: *
> bef. 900;  ME; OE *fōt*;  c. G Fuss;  akin to L pēs  (s. ped- ), Gk poús  (s. pod- )
> 
> Both are mono-syllabic, with long close o, and one developped into long _oo, _the other one into short _oo._


Thanks. I gathered by now, my idea would lead nowhere. According to the source Alex discovered (thank you very much Alex!!!), the split happened much later than I thought.


----------



## hadronic

Alxmrphi said:


> I've just had a look at this page, and found out a lot of stuff I didn't know before
> 
> So* /o:/* changed in all types of "oo" words (food, took, blood, room) to* /u:/* in the 17th century, then the shortening happened before voiced plosives, before the foot-strut split, then the foot-strut split in Southern English became inactive and *then* the /u:/ shortening before _voiceless_ plosives took place, which explains the distinction why even RP speakers don't have STRUT in words like book/took, because the /u:/ shortening affected the earlier phonetic environment, and only applied to the reduced  words.




This is actually what I was briefly explaining in very first post.

That said, regarding what they explain in that link, there's not such foot-strut split, as a phenomon _per se_. They're just talking about [ʊ] lowering to [ʌ].
The foot-strut split as a unique phenomenon never happened as such. At the time were _strut _[ʊ] got lowered to [ʌ], _foot _was still long [u:].

When we talk about foot-strut split, we're talking about varieties of English that underwent [ʊ] lowering to [ʌ] and, later, shortening of [u:] to [ʊ], as opposed to those who didn't undergo the [ʌ] lowering, and for which _foot_ and _strut_ rhyme (pronounced [ʊ]).


----------



## Alxmrphi

> At the time were _strut _[ʊ] got lowered to [ʌ], _foot _was still long [u:].


It was FOOT [ʊ] that got lowered to STRUT [ʌ], yes.
As for when the lowering happened, this page says it wasn't this order (as you can see, the first line of "Quality Adjustment" indicates the introduction of the FOOT vowel, which precedes the lowering to STRUT, which happens in the second Quality Adjustment, showing that it wasn't still [u:] when foot-strut occured).




> When we talk about foot-strut split, we're talking about varieties of English that underwent [ʊ] lowering to [ʌ] and, later, shortening of [u:] to [ʊ], as opposed to those who didn't undergo the [ʌ] lowering, and for which _foot_ and _strut_ rhyme (pronounced [ʊ]).


Yes, this is the foot-strut split as I understand it (barring note above about timing of shortening of back vowel).
(For clarification of others: [ʌ] didn't lower, [ʊ] did)

We don't have the STRUT phoneme in the north of England, and they didn't use to in the south of England, so there was a phonemic split to cause this.
I am not sure if I have misinterpreted your post, please excuse me if I have.


----------



## hadronic

Alxmrphi said:


> It was FOOT [ʊ] that got lowered to STRUT [ʌ], yes.



No, precisely not !
_foot _dit not get lowered because it was still a long [u:] at the time where the [ʊ]>[ʌ] lowering took place.



> [ʌ] didn't lower, [ʊ] did.
> 
> [/QUOTE ]
> 
> Sorry, I meant "the [ʊ]>[ʌ] lowering".
> So it reads now :
> 
> When we talk about foot-strut split, we're talking about varieties of English that (1) underwent [ʊ] lowering to [ʌ] and, (2), later, shortening of [u:] to [ʊ], as opposed to those who didn't undergo the [ʊ]>[ʌ] lowering, and for which _foot_ and _strut_ rhyme (pronounced [ʊ]).
> 
> 
> 
> 
> We don't have the STRUT phoneme in the north of England, and they didn't use to in the South of England, so there was a phonemic split to cause this.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> There are two phenomenon, a lowering and a shortening, that both end up to the emergence of that split *state*. A phonetic change (like the lowering or the shortening) are not splits _per se. _They are just changes.
> 
> Now, (not willing to mix things up but that would be unfaire not to mention that), in the particular case of English, we can talk about that shortening as a split per se, because it didn't affect all the long _oo_'s, and for that reason, split the vocabulary into two groups.
> Same for the lowering, it didn't affect all the short _oo_'s (_but _vs. _put)_.
Click to expand...


----------



## Alxmrphi

> No, precisely not !
> _foot _dit not get lowered because it was still a long [u:] at the time where the [ʊ]>[ʌ] lowering took place.


This table in Wikipedia says it wasn't a long [u:] when the foot-strut 'separation' happened. As it says, the "Later Shortening" changes "foot" to have the FOOT vowel, preceding the lowering to STRUT (that happened in other groups of "oo" words), not to "foot".

 I know where our confusion is coming from now..

When I write FOOT (in capitals), I am talking about the vowel sound, not the word.
You're talking about the word, not the vowel sound.

Things make sense now ...


----------



## hadronic

Alxmrphi said:


> It was FOOT [ʊ] that got lowered to STRUT [ʌ], yes.
> As for when the lowering happened, this page says it wasn't this order (as you can see, the first line of "Quality Adjustment" indicates the introduction of the FOOT vowel, which precedes the lowering to STRUT, which happens in the second Quality Adjustment, showing that it wasn't still [u:] when foot-strut occured).



I'm not reading the chart the same way as you are.
At the "foot-strut" split line, "foot" is still [u:]. I don't know why they call this the "foot-strut" split as those two words just didn't split at that period of time.


----------



## Alxmrphi

hadronic said:


> I'm not reading the chart the same way as you are.
> At the "foot-strut" split like, "foot" is still [u:]. I don't know why they call this the "foot-strut" split as those two words just didn't split at that period of time.



See above 

I do admit I was looking at the line below foot-strut split and interpreting it as that line, so I was wrong on that point.


----------



## berndf

hadronic said:


> No, precisely not !
> _foot _dit not get lowered because it was still a long [u:] at the time where the [ʊ]>[ʌ] lowering took place.


Just a small footnote: The Southern English /ʊ/>/ʌ/ shift was mainly an _unrounding_ and not a _lowering_ phenomenon. Lowering and fronting to its current position which is about [ɐ] was a gradual process which happened later.


----------



## hadronic

In the chart, ɤ and  ʌ are basically the same sound.


----------



## hadronic

The wiki page says it itself :

The name "foot-strut split" refers to the lexical sets  introduced by Wells (1982), and identifies the vowel phonemes in the  words, though that name may be a bit misleading as the word _foot_ itself may have had a different vowel from _put_ at the time the split occurred and so did not participate in the split.


----------



## Alxmrphi

hadronic said:


> The wiki page says it itself :
> 
> The name "foot-strut split" refers to the lexical sets  introduced by Wells (1982), and identifies the vowel phonemes in the  words, though that name may be a bit misleading as the word _foot_ itself may have had a different vowel from _put_ at the time the split occurred and so did not participate in the split.



Yeah, I wasn't aware you were not following me when talking about vowel sounds. Whatever the word itself, it has become irrelevant. For example I talk about FOOT/STRUT differences but they don't even exist in my dialect. My 'BATH' is the same as my 'TRAP', these labels are used so you can represent sounds through writing, irrespective of what the words sound like themselves to you. It's common now (as berndf pointed out) that the STRUT vowel has gone on and developed even further, but it's still useful to keep these labels in a phonemic historical context.

When I was talking, I was referring specifically to the lexical sets (when in capital letters).
This was where I think we got confused.

That, and me looking at the wrong line on the table on the Wiki page.

So for example, in the following:


> No, precisely not !
> _foot _dit not get lowered because it was still a long [u:] at the time where the [ʊ]>[ʌ] lowering took place.


Now I understand your confusion, because I was not talking about the word "foot".
Hopefully, you understand mine, because the FOOT vowel, present in the words "blood", "flood", "dull" and "fun" all did develop into STRUT [ʌ] in RP English.


----------



## hadronic

Agreed. 

So now back to my /hu:k/ vs /hʊk/ question  .


----------



## Alxmrphi

hadronic said:


> Agreed.
> 
> So now back to my /hu:k/ vs /hʊk/ question  .



That feels like so long ago!
So where we left off with that was, they both exist where I am from, and don't create a minimal pair, but that's not the case everywhere.

I would imagine most people would understand it to be "hook", but maybe it's better to wait for someone who doesn't have the unusual pronunciation around them all the time


----------



## Forero

hadronic said:


> My question is actually : if I neutralize the /ʊ/ - /u:/ opposition, realizing it either /u/, /u:/, /ʊ/ or /ʊ:/, or even, /ʉ/ or /ɯ/, long or short, how bad does it affect your understanding ?
> 
> Sure, you already gave a list of some minimal pairs, but you will admit that they involves quite uncommon pieces of vocabulary, unlike the _leave-live_ opposition. So, most of the _oo-_word of English will exist only in one unique version, one unique concrete realization of that /U/ archi-phoneme : /ʊ/ or /u:/.
> 
> So if you hear /hu:k/, how difficult is it for you to figure out it's actually _hook_, given that /hu:k/ doesn't exist, and more, _cannot _exist, as /hʊk/ already occupied the /hUk/ archi-syllable. And furthermore, English orthography doesn't provide obvious orthographic convention even though someone wanted to create the word /hu:k/. You just cannot write it. And with good reason, English orthography represents pre-GVS English, and this /ʊ/ - /u:/ opposition is a "recent" feature of English.
> 
> I don't deny the lists of pairs you gave, but lots of them are secondary formations (_who'd, gooed,..._), some are due to the _dew_-_do_ merger (_nuke, _and maybe also _suit _and _Luke _(?) ), that doesn't make up a consistent ensemble. And if ever you happen to have that /ʊ/ - /u:/ opposition hardcoded in your brain more I would think, I doubt it would come from this kind of pairs. Obviously, you would have created this opposition in your brain in the absence of any such minimal pairs, actually, just based on the _good_ - _food _relation, which is not a minimal pair. And this, would be unique among all languages I know.


Most cooks are not kooks, but some are. And I never imagined "kooky monster" when I heard "Cookie Monster", though now that I think of it he is a little kooky, isn't he?

Saying _poot_ for _put_ will make most ten-year-olds in my area snicker. _Poot_ may not be universal, but I don't think only Arkansas kids say this sort of thing:

_Beans, beans, the musical fruit._
_The more you eat, the more you poot,_
_The more you poot, the better you feel,_
_So let's have beans for every meal._

The difference is clearly phonemic where I live, and _cook_, _kook_, _put_, and I daresay _poot_ are not uncommon words. Of course, _put_ is transitive and _poot _is not, but _kook_ and _cook_ are both well-used count nouns applied to people.

Most native English speakers (by sheer numbers) pronounce no _y_ sound in _suit_, _Luke_, or _nuke_. I think the [j] was lost from these words because the preceding consonants might otherwise have palatized (in the same large region), making _suit_ sound more like _shoot_ and making _Luke_ and _nuke_ harder to understand. Nevertheless, I suspect this change would not have happened if _soot_ and _look_ had rhymed with _boot_ and _kook_.


----------



## Alxmrphi

> Most native English speakers (by sheer numbers) pronounce no _y_ sound in _suit_, _Luke_, or _nuke_.


I agree 66.6% (i.e. suit/Luke) but with_ nuke_ I would say an absence of [j] is a characteristic of American English. A lot of English underwent yod-dropping (loss of [j]) but American English took it a little bit further and applied it to /t/, /d/ and /n/ (as described here):



> <Details of common yod-dropping in most varieties of English>
> 
> [...]
> 
> Yod-dropping in the above environments was formerly considered  nonstandard in England, but today it is heard even among well-educated RP speakers. In General American yod-dropping is found not only in the above environments *but also*:
> 
> 
> After /t/, /d/ and /n/, for example _tune_ [ˈtuːn], _dew_ [ˈduː], _new_ [ˈnuː]


Many many many of us (dare I say vast majority of Brits?)  have it still in *new* [nju:] and in general the environments where American has applied it.
So for example, a clear example (and one I remember talking about) was with *tuna*. General American had yod-dropping, and lost it, while it remained in British English and thus underwent yod-coalescence (resulting in our modern pronunciation of [tʃu:na]). As yod-coalescence also occurred with /d/ alongside /t/ (like I said with 'tuna') this also is why we have 'dew' as [dʒu:], unlike how I think it still is in American, like the wiki quote above says. As it didn't apply with /n/ it just meant [j] is still there as it was earlier on.


----------



## hadronic

@Ferero :
I'm not denying that you actually make a phonemic difference between the (very) few examples of /ʊ/ vs. /u:/.

My question is more about the (many) other possible syllables that _do not_ show this kind of pair, like /fu:t/ vs. /fʊt/, /bu:t/ vs. /bʊt/, /su:n/ vs. /sʊn/ etc.... where we do have on the other hand, _feet _vs. _fit_, _beat _vs. _bit_, _seen _vs. _sin_, ...


----------



## berndf

hadronic said:


> @Ferero :
> I'm not denying that you actually make a phonemic difference between the (very) few examples of /ʊ/ vs. /u:/.
> 
> My question is more about the (many) other possible syllables that _do not_ show this kind of pair, like /fu:t/ vs. /fʊt/, /bu:t/ vs. /bʊt/, /su:n/ vs. /sʊn/ etc.... where we do have on the other hand, _feet _vs. _fit_, _beat _vs. _bit_, _seen _vs. _sin_, ...


I would understand /bʊt/ as "but" and /sʊn/ as "sun" because that's how these words are pronounced in large parts of England. 

I might understand /bʊ:t/ and /sʊ:n/ deviant pronunciations of "boot" and "soon", respectively, but I am not sure.


----------

