# Mind/wind (pronunciation)



## LiliaGaripovaRadikovna

Why we pronounce sometimes [ʌɪ], sometimes [ɪ], there is any rule for words like this?


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## Welsh_Sion

No rules as far as I can see - but your title is slightly misleading:

For example, 'mind' (noun, memory) has [ʌɪ]
'mind' (verb, to look after something/someone) has [ʌɪ]

'wind' (noun, a current of air) has [ɪ]
BUT ....
'wind' (verb, to form by twisting) has [ʌɪ],

I, like many people who learnt English, just learnt the pronunciation at the same time as the word. I think that's all you can do - English is notoriously unphonemic, that way. Good luck!


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## LiliaGaripovaRadikovna

Welsh_Sion said:


> No rules as far as I can see - but your title is slightly misleading:
> 
> For example, 'mind' (noun, memory) has [ʌɪ]
> 'mind' (verb, to look after something/someone) has [ʌɪ]
> 
> 'wind' (noun, a current of air) has [ɪ]
> BUT ....
> 'wind' (verb, to form by twisting) has [ʌɪ],
> 
> I, like many people who learnt English, just learnt the pronunciation at the same time as the word. I think that's all you can do - English is notoriously unphonemic, that way. Good luck!


Yes, thank you) but you mean "mind" verb has [ɪ] or [ʌɪ]?


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## Welsh_Sion

to mind (vb.) /mʌɪnd/.


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## entangledbank

The general rule is from a sound change in Middle English where short [i ] lengthened before two consonants: so we got long [i:] in most such words, _wind_ [verb, meaning "twist"], _blind_, _mind_, _hind_, _rind_, _child_, _mild_, _wild_, and so on. Middle English long [i:] became [ai] in the Great Vowel Shift of the 1400s. The noun _wind_ "air" with its continuing short [i ] is an exception, and I don't know of a good explanation for it.

The lengthening did not happen before _three_ consonants, so we retain a short [i ] in _children_.

_Edited next day:_ Yes, of course, I meant before, not after.


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## Awwal12

entangledbank said:


> The lengthening did not happen after _three_ consonants, so we retain a short [i ] in _children_.


But cf. child.
All in all, seeking regularities in English orthogrpahy is of little practical use. In reality one ends up learning the pronunciation and the spelling separately anyway.


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## fdb

The venerable OED puts it like this:

The normal pronunciation would be /waɪnd/, as in _behind_, _bind_, _find_, _grind_, _hind_, _mind_, _rind_, etc., and this pronunciation remains dialectally and in ordinary poetical usage. The pronunciation  /wɪnd/ became current in polite speech during the 18th cent.; it has been used occasionally by poets, but the paucity of appropriate rhyming words (such as _sinned_, _thinned_, _dinned_) and the ‘thinness’ of the sound have been against its general use in verse. The short vowel of  /wɪnd/ is presumably due to the influence of the derivatives _windmill_, _windy_, in which  /ɪ/ is normal.


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## berndf

fdb said:


> The pronunciation /wɪnd/ became current in polite speech during the 18th cent.


See e.g., Shakespeare sonnet 14, where _wind_ is rhymed with _find_:
_Nor can I fortune to brief minutes *tell*,
Pointing to each his thunder, rain and *wind*,
Or say with princes if it shall go *well*,
By oft predict that I in heaven *find*_


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## fdb

Or still Shelley, "Ode to the West Wind" (1820):
_
Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth
Ashes and sparks, my words among *mankind*!
Be through my lips to unawakened Earth

The trumpet of a prophecy! O *Wind*,
If Winter comes, can Spring be far *behind*?_


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## elroy

The poetry examples don’t prove anything: that could be eye rhyme.


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## berndf

elroy said:


> The poetry examples don’t prove anything: that could be eye rhyme.


Indeed only tentative evidence and not proof. But there are not as many (if any) eye rhymes in ME and early ModE as people often think. The examples one is taught at school are (mostly at least) caused by sound shifts in ModE that broke what at the time the text was written were valid (perfect or imperfect) rhymes.


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## se16teddy

LiliaGaripovaRadikovna said:


> Why we pronounce sometimes [ʌɪ], sometimes [ɪ], there is any rule for words like this?


Lilia, can you please give an example of the kinds of words you are thinking of?
Welsh Sion assumed you were thinking of words like _mind_; but I think that /mʌɪnd/ is a typically Welsh pronunciation: elsewhere it is more commonly pronounced /maɪnd/.


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## Welsh_Sion

se16teddy said:


> Lilia, can you please give an example of the kinds of words you are thinking of?
> Welsh Sion assumed you were thinking of words like _mind_; but I think that /mʌɪnd/ is a typically Welsh pronunciation: elsewhere it is more commonly pronounced /maɪnd/.



Actually, /ʌ/, does not exist in Welsh and we tend to substitute schwa for it in all places - including where the vowel is stressed. This is because schwa is not a weak vowel in Welsh.

I would agree with you that /aɪ/ is the more usual notation here, and it's the one I learnt when doing an English as a Foreign Language course for teachers. (Cert. TESOL). However, my Oxford dictionary lists the diphthong as /ʌɪ/ which I accepted, although I did find it a bit strange.


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## berndf

In most varieties of English, the starting point of the long-_i_ diphthong doesn't exist as a monophthong. It is probably somewhere in the vicinity of [ɐ], i.e. a bit higher than a fully open central [a] (or [ä] if you prefer reserving [a] for a fonted open vowel). If you approximate that by [a] or [ʌ] is a bit arbitrary. I wouldn't take this too seriously.


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## LiliaGaripovaRadikovna

se16teddy said:


> Lilia, can you please give an example of the kinds of words you are thinking of?
> Welsh Sion assumed you were thinking of words like _mind_; but I think that /mʌɪnd/ is a typically Welsh pronunciation: elsewhere it is more commonly pronounced /maɪnd/.


Yes, "find", "ring", "King" "wild"


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## entangledbank

None of the words ending in _-ng_ have any variation, they're all [ɪ]. And so are those ending in _-nk_, like _drink, think, sink_. So the lengthening didn't apply to all groups. It's those ending in _-ld_ and _-nd_ that show it clearly today. And the Middle English lengthening is the main reason for that.

A lot of the strangeness of English spelling of vowels is explained by the event called the Great Vowel Shift, where all the long vowels changed quality. That's why _mat_ and _mate_, or _rid_ and _ride_, have such very different sounds for the same letter.


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## Awwal12

se16teddy said:


> Lilia, can you please give an example of the kinds of words you are thinking of?
> Welsh Sion assumed you were thinking of words like _mind_; but I think that /mʌɪnd/ is a typically Welsh pronunciation: elsewhere it is more commonly pronounced /maɪnd/.


Russian native speakers have obvious huge troubles distinguishing [ɐ] (the most widespread realization of the English /ʌ/) and [a]; both are positional allophones of the same phoneme in Russian and belong to the same perceptional cluster. And it's only marginally better with [ɑ] (at least that one is technically absent in Russian, but it doesn't improve the situation a lot; all open and near-open unrounded vowels tend to be interpreted in the same way). "Oh my Gut!.."


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## se16teddy

Welsh_Sion said:


> Actually, /ʌ/, does not exist in Welsh and we tend to substitute schwa for it in all places - including where the vowel is stressed. This is because schwa is not a weak vowel in Welsh.


  When I said “Welsh pronunciation“ I was thinking of the Welsh English of my grandparents, who were from the eastern Valleys - far away from north Wales. I remember, for example, my grandad’s pronunciation of the word “mun”. I don’t know much about phonetics but I would describe that vowel as a very tense /ʌ/.


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## Welsh_Sion

se16teddy said:


> When I said “Welsh pronunciation“ I was thinking of the Welsh English of my grandparents, who were from the eastern Valleys - far away from north Wales. I remember, for example, my grandad’s pronunciation of the word “mun”. I don’t know much about phonetics but I would describe that vowel as a very tense /ʌ/.



Ok, it might well be that we're both right - if we're coming at it from different angles. Wenglish is a different beast in that respect from my mother tongue. Most certainly Cymraeg itself does not have 'wedge' and will substitute schwa for it in many cases. Maybe it is a northern/southern thing, but the vowels in English 'butter' are essentially identical to many of my compatriots.

I can not speak for myself however as I've travelled quite extensively and people rarely identify me correctly from my accent in English or French. But fellow North West Walians (and perhaps others outside) can definitely place me as Gwynedd when I speak Welsh ...


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## Loob

There's some background to Oxford Dictionaries' use of [ʌɪ] rather than [aɪ] in John Wells' 2001 paper IPA transcription systems for English.


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## entangledbank

I've always agreed with his criticism that these are unnecessarily detailed small changes, and it's better to retain a standard system.


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## berndf

entangledbank said:


> I've always agreed with his criticism that these are unnecessarily detailed small changes, and it's better to retain a standard system.


I guess it makes sense if you use [a] for a fronted rather than for a central a an if you transcribe man [man] rather than [mæn]. But that change is unnecessary as well.


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## berndf

Awwal12 said:


> But cf. child.


By "but"? That is exactly what @entangledbank explained:

The _i_ is followed by *two* consonants in _child_ => lengthening.
The _i_ is followed by *three* consonants in _children _=> *no* lengthening.


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## Awwal12

berndf said:


> By "but"? That is exactly what @entangledbank explained:
> 
> The _i_ is followed by *two* consonants in _child_ => lengthening.
> The _i_ is followed by *three* consonants in _children _=> *no* lengthening.


Yes, I misinterpreted his post initially. My bad.


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