# Realisation of British English /æ/ and relation to German /a/ and /a:/



## timpeac

*Moderator note: Up to and including post #21 this thread has been compiled from other sources.
*


Wordsmyth said:


> ... not to mention the many BE speakers who pronounce "plaster" and "France" with /a/ (north of Watford Gap), or /aː/ (west of Monmouth), or even /aːːː/ (west of Swindon)!
> 
> Ws


Well, yes - there are some British speakers who never use /ɑ/. They only have the phoneme /æ/, and the way that they actually pronounce that phoneme is just a matter of accent. As discussed above, pronouncing the phoneme /æ/ as the phonetic sound [æ] is old-fashioned in British English.


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## Wordsmyth

timpeac said:


> Well, yes - there are some British speakers who never use /ɑ/. They only have the phoneme /æ/, and the way that they actually pronounce that phoneme is just a matter of accent. As discussed above, pronouncing the phoneme /æ/ as the phonetic sound [æ] is old-fashioned in British English.


 Good point, Tim. I suppose I should have written [a], [aː] and [aːːː].

It's just that at a gut-feel level I'm always a little disturbed by /æ/ representing the phoneme, and [a] being one of its allophones. I suppose that's because [æ] doesn't figure in my speech, nor in that of most people I know: the basic 'short a' is [a], with phonetic variants that could be considered as allophones of /a/. For me, at least in the context of BrE, using /æ/ as the representation of the phoneme is a bit like calling a taxi a hackney carriage. But then I'm not setting out to change the world, so I'll conform with the status quo.

Ws


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## timpeac

Wordsmyth said:


> It's just that at a gut-feel level I'm always a little disturbed by /æ/ representing the phoneme, and [a] being one of its allophones. I suppose that's because [æ] doesn't figure in my speech, nor in that of most people I know:


I couldn't agree more You'll see me defending this against Bernd's opinion that it helps differentiate against the "a" of many other languages which have already staked the claim to the standard phonemic symbol /a/ but where the realisation is in fact a central vowel [ä] in this thread from post 61 onwards <...>.

 But we are where we are with the the standard phonemic symbols. I certainly agree that the phonetic difference is large enough to use [a] for the realisation (even if the precise realisation is more nuanced than that - after all for every sound we make the simple phonetic symbol isn't good enough without some diacritics). When I said "as discussed above" in my last post, I might have been alluding to that thread I've linked to. Apologies if so - there are at least three threads in the culture forum going on at the moment which are greatly overlapping.



Wordsmyth said:


> For me, at least in the context of BrE, using /æ/ as the representation of the phoneme is a bit like calling a taxi a hackney carriage.


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## Wordsmyth

<...>

However I'll permit myself a comment on one suggestion made in that thread that concerned American pronunciation (so it may have a smidgen of relevance here): it was proposed that the oft-encountered German pronunciation of the phoneme /æ/ as [ɛ] might be due to AmE influence. However I find a very significant difference between the realisation of /æ/ in most AmE accents and that in 'old RP' — and to my ear the German pronunciation is very like the latter. I once asked a German schoolteacher why he pronounced (and taught) the English word "bad" like "bed", when the [a] as in Stadt would be much closer. He said, with a serious tone, "We pronounce it as your Queen does. Surely that must be right!" — which is pretty much in line with your assumption in post #61 of the other thread.

Ws


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## berndf

The simple answer is that Germans simply don't hear a difference between [æ] and [ɛ] and also the lowering in modern southern English doesn't change this; only the northern /æ/ sounds different for a German ear. That's really all it is. That vowel in German _Stadt _already overlays with the English vowel in _but _(Germans usually don't realize they pronounce the short /a/ differently, viz. [ɐ], and therefore associate the English /ʌ/, for which [ɐ] is one of the possible realizations, with [a]) and is therefore not a candidate for association with /æ/.

And as you were taking about feelings, let me also be make a completely non-objective remark and then I'll return to a scientific tone: 
<subjective>If you need to distinguish the modern southern /æ/ from the older one than please find another letter. It is simply so wrong to call it "a". There is nothing a-ish about that sound. An "a" is a very special vowel. It is the vowel that is produced when you have your mouth open and your tongue and lips fully relaxed. Grimm once called it "the noblest of all sounds". Calling anything but a central vowel "a" is ridiculous. For the back-a we have a special symbol, viz. [ɑ]. The fronted [a] should be given a special symbol too but the symbol "a" should stay where it rightfully belongs.</subjective>


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## Youngfun

To my ears, many Americans pronounce /æ/ like [ɛ], and this is also the Italian accent. While in British English, the /æ/ shifted to [a]. And for me it's hard to distinguish [a] from [ɑ].
And so I can't distinguish [fɹɑns] and [fɹans].


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## berndf

Just to make sure we're talking about the same thing: You realize that the realization of /æ/ differs regionally in Britain? In general: the more northern the more central the pronunciation.


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## merquiades

Maybe I'm missing something, and granted I have not heard every possible accent, but the only time I've heard native-English speakers pronounce /a/ for /ae/ they are usually from Jamaica or the Caribbean:   Give 'im a big pat on the back, man!  As I said in another thread, I do hear /ʌ/ moving towards /a/ in many speakers though, especially in the case of Estuary dialect speakers.
Not to veer off-topic:  /a/ is the sound in French "la dame Morgane".  Americans often lengthen these to /a:/ in French.


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## berndf

merquiades said:


> I do hear /ʌ/ moving towards /a/ in many speakers though, especially in the case of Estuary dialect speakers.


It matches the short German /a/ perfectly in London accent. Listen for the word "g*o*vernor" here (he says it several times).


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## merquiades

berndf said:


> It matches the short German /a/ perfectly in London accent. Listen for the word "g*o*vernor" here (he says it several times).



Yes, "governor" is the perfect word to hear it.  Also the preposition "up" pronounced /ap/.  This vowel change is highly contagious too.  I could see it spreading.  When I talk with people who do it, I start picking it up, and say "Get on the /bas/".


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## timpeac

berndf said:


> And as you were taking about feelings, let me also be make a completely non-objective remark and then I'll return to a scientific tone:
> <subjective>If you need to distinguish the modern southern /æ/ from the older one than please find another letter. It is simply so wrong to call it "a". There is nothing a-ish about that sound. An "a" is a very special vowel. It is the vowel that is produced when you have your mouth open and your tongue and lips fully relaxed. Grimm once called it "the noblest of all sounds". Calling anything but a central vowel "a" is ridiculous. For the back-a we have a special symbol, viz. [ɑ]. The fronted [a] should be given a special symbol too but the symbol "a" should stay where it rightfully belongs.</subjective>



How could I possibly criticise such an empassioned_ cri de coeur_ (see how I've seamlessly linked this back in to use of French in English ). I've already made my points why I disagree with this in the other thread anyway.

I wonder, though, in relation to your first paragraph why other languages such as French which use a mid-vowel for "a" are happy to associate the British realisation of /æ/ with [a], and copy it themselves for that phoneme, and not with /ʌ/. The other question that really springs to mind is that although you make quite sweeping statements such as "Germans simply don't hear a difference" this simply can't be true for those who speak really good English (and I say that knowing full well that many Germans speak very good English - I'm talking about those who speak it really well by the already good German average standard) - yet I know many Germans who speak English to this excellent level who, when aiming to speak British English, still don't get the pronunciation of this vowel right. I remember a French person once saying (somewhere on these forums, I think) that the English could never hope to differentiate "tu" and "tout" so there was no point in trying. I thought at the time, what nonsense. It takes learning and practice but certainly far from impossible.

<...>


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## berndf

timpeac said:


> How could I possibly criticise such an empassioned_ cri de coeur_ (see how I've seamlessly linked this back in to use of French in English ). I've already made my points why I disagree with this in the other thread anyway.


You realize of, course that this was only half-serious. Being trained in scientific methodology, I know of course that definitions (and those are IPA symbols) cannot be right or wrong, only more of less useful.


timpeac said:


> I wonder, though, in relation to your first paragraph why other languages such as French which use a mid-vowel for "a" are happy to associate the British realisation of /æ/ with [a], and copy it themselves for that phoneme...


I am not quite sure this is the case for French. It certainly applies for Italian. Phoneme boundaries run differently in different language, i.e. the point where a sound "flips" from one perception to another.



timpeac said:


> , and not with /ʌ/.


No reason to. It is the German short /a/ that overlaps with /ʌ/. The French /a/ overlaps in quality with the German long /a:/. I mentioned this in response to WS's question why the Germans don't associate the vowel of German _Stadt _with the British /æ/. Remember, German is a language with full length phonemicity and has distinct vowel systems for long and short vowel (here is diagram I produced a while ago to show the relative positions of German a-sound (green) in relation to some English phonemes in the neighbourhood (blue). The blue line separates /ʌ/- from "a"-territory. The blue "a" represents the sound in the diphthong /aɪ/, not the modern RP /æ/). French has only a fully open /a/; they associate [ɐ] with a different phoneme. Most French pronounce English /ʌ/ as [ə], i.e. like the French unaccented <e>.


timpeac said:


> The other question that really springs to mind is that although you make quite sweeping statements such as "Germans simply don't hear a difference" this simply can't be true for those who speak really good English (and I say that knowing full well that many Germans speak very good English - I'm talking about those who speak it really well by the already good German average standard) - yet I know many Germans who speak English to this excellent level who, when aiming to speak British English, still don't get the pronunciation of this vowel right.


I can differentiate [ɛ] and [æ], both in recognition and production. By now, it hurts my ears when I hear them announce on German TV a new episode of the detective series _Kessel_ rather than _Castle_. But it was very, very hard labour. But I still consider the difference between the American and modern southern British English absolutely minor compared the the difference between southern and northern British /æ/. For me as a German those are completely different. If I wanted to differentiate between different realizations of /æ/ by using different symbols then I would want to differentiate between those two rather than between the American and the southern British one. I am curious how you as a BE speaker perceive this.

<...>


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## timpeac

berndf said:


> You realize of, course that this was only half-serious. Being trained in scientific methodology, I know of course that definitions (and those are IPA symbols) cannot be right or wrong, only more of less useful.


Yes, of course.


berndf said:


> But I still consider the difference between the American and modern southern British English absolutely minor compared the the difference between southern and northern British /æ/. For me as a German those are completely different. If I wanted to differentiate between different realizations of /æ/ by using different symbols then I would want to differentiate between those two rather than between the American and the southern British one. I am curious how you as a BE speaker perceive this.


 I don't think I know enough about the AE realisation to compare. Since this thread started I have been listening out for /æ/ realisations in AE and it seems to be fairly complicated. The range of possible realisations across speakers seems to be large but there are other complicating factors too. The amount of diphthongisation that occurs seems to vary greatly also - both for individual speakers and across accents. The value that speakers give /æ/ can very for individual speakers also for different words. In other words I haven't worked out the "rules" of /æ/ realisation in AE. On the BE side, I'm not aware of a huge difference - could you link to a couple of sound files to explain the difference you hear?

<...>


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## timpeac

<...>

Why can't Germans do the same with [a] even if it's not what they phonemically expect from /æ/?


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## berndf

<...>



timpeac said:


> Why can't Germans do the same with [a] even if it's not what they phonemically expect from /æ/?


1) Germans expect nothing from /æ/. They don't expect a phonemic in between /ɛ/ and /a/. The problem is that  _b*e*t_,_ b*a*t_ and _I_ [*a*ɪ] contain there different vowels. German expects only two vowels in this range.

2) You should really let go of the idea that "Stadt" contains an [a] (central or frontal). The short "a" is *not* an open vowel. Please re-read my earlier posts on this topic.


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## timpeac

<...>



> 1) Germans expect nothing from /æ/. They don't expect a phonemic in between /ɛ/ and /a/. The problem is that  _b*e*t_,_ b*a*t_ and _I_ [*a*ɪ] contain there different vowels. German expects only two vowels in this range.
> 
> 2) You should really let go of the idea that "Stadt" contains an [a] (central or frontal). The short "a" is *not* an open vowel. Please re-read my earlier posts on this topic.



In relation to 1) Well they should! They have access to the pronunciation of both in their language. "I" can be easily differentiated from the other two by being a diphthong so that can be discounted, leaving two. In any case, and I'll stress again what I've said dozens of times in this conversation, I'm only talking about linguists who really care about what they are saying. When you learn that a foreign language analyses and realises sounds differently you do the same if you want people to think you speak that language well and if you want to be understood well. 2) "Stadt" wasn't my choice. Someone picked that earlier and you didn't criticise it so I stayed with that. I will simply say that if a German uses the vowel they use in "Mann" to realise /æ/ when speaking English then they will have a better English accent, and be more readily understood than their classmate who uses the usual German interpretation of /æ/.

You don't seem to answer certain parts of my posts that I think are key, so I'll repeat from earlier

I think your point that, whether /ɛ/ becomes /e/ or /e/ becomes /ɛ/  in some restricted cases, ultimately they will settle down to one,  namely /e/, in all contexts is interesting. I suspect you're right. To  get back to my original point, it was of an example of a phonemic  difference in a language foreign to me which is unexpected but, having  learnt it, I would be keen to follow if that is what natives are doing.  Why can't Germans do the same with [a] even if it's not what they  phonemically expect (strike expect add interpret) from /æ/?


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## berndf

timpeac said:


> Well they should!


It makes no sense philosophizing how the phonology of a language _should_ be. It is the way it is. You asked by it is so difficult for Germans to distinguish /ɛ/ and /æ/. Well that is the answer. Germans do not head vowel in between /ɛ/ ans the central /a/. There is one point where the perception flips from a short "e" to a long "a". There is nothing in between and the southern English /æ/ is on the "e"-side of this divide while the northern English /æ/ is on the "a"-side.



timpeac said:


> "Stadt" wasn't my choice. Someone picked that earlier and you didn't criticise it so I stayed with that.


I did. See #170, #173, #174, #176, and #184. 


timpeac said:


> I will simply say that if a German uses the vowel they use in "Mann" to realise /æ/


The vowel of _Mann_ is also short.


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## timpeac

berndf said:


> It makes no sense philosophizing how the phonology of a language _should_ be.


Bernd, I've thought about answering your other points here but I think it's just getting away from the main issue. Germans are physically and phonologically capable of pronouncing [a]. Therefore they_ should _if they want to speak English well.

It is not beyond the wit of man to say [a] and it is not beyond the wit of man to do so even if it doesn't fit in with the phonology of your native language.


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## berndf

timpeac said:


> Bernd, I've thought about answering your other points here but I think it's just getting away from the main issue. Germans are physically and phonologically capable of pronouncing [a]. Therefore they_ should _if they want to speak English well.
> 
> It is not beyond the wit of man to say [a] and it is not beyond the wit of man to do so even if it doesn't fit in with the phonology of your native language.


I can only repeat myself. You asked why it is so difficult for Germans to separate /ɛ/ and /æ/ and what I told you is the answer. It is that simple. Germans can't hear the difference without an astronomic about of training and when you can't even perceive the difference it is very difficult to reproduce it. And if you told a German to pronounce _hat_ like the German word _hat_, he would say _hut_.


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## berndf

timpeac said:


> I don't think I know enough about the AE realisation to compare. Since this thread started I have been listening out for /æ/ realisations in AE and it seems to be fairly complicated. The range of possible realisations across speakers seems to be large but there are other complicating factors too. The amount of diphthongisation that occurs seems to vary greatly also - both for individual speakers and across accents.


With most speakers, diphthongization occurs only in front of nasals (/n/ & /m/). Ignore words like _man, land, band, ham, ..._



timpeac said:


> On the BE side, I'm not aware of a huge difference - could you link to a couple of sound files to explain the difference you hear?


I'll give you two examples from dialectal speech. That makes the difference clearer. But many northern speakers who otherwise speak fairly standard use that /æ/ which I would describe as "slightly behind central" (i.e. [ä] slightly leaning towards [ɑ]): http://www.bl.uk/learning/langlit/sounds/text-only/england/byker/ (listen for _m*a*rry_ and _h*a*ppy_).

As a reference for the southern /æ/, I think the gentleman from Hackney I referred to earlier should be sufficient: http://www.bl.uk/learning/langlit/sounds/text-only/england/hackney-contemporary/ (listen for _v*a*lue_).


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## Wordsmyth

<...>

I'll respond to some of the recent points. 


berndf said:


> _ [...]_the lowering in* modern southern English* doesn't change this; only *the northern /**æ/* sounds different for a German ear. _[...]_


 Sorry, Bernd, but that's a gross over-simplification. In that and other posts you refer to "northern" and "southern" English, but the variation in vowel sounds between north-east, north-west, south-east, south-west, east, Midlands, etc is enormous. 


berndf said:


> _ [...] _As a reference for the southern /æ/, I think the gentleman from Hackney I referred to earlier should be sufficient: http://www.bl.uk/learning/langlit/sounds/text-only/england/hackney-contemporary/ (listen for _v*a*lue_).


 As a reference for the Hackney /æ/, it's sufficient. As a reference for many other southern realisations of /æ/ it's not at all sufficient. Just to take one example, the realisation of the /æ/ in Somerset is is vastly differently from that in Hackney. Similarly ...


berndf said:


> _[...]_ many northern speakers who otherwise speak fairly standard use that /æ/ which I would describe as "slightly behind central" (i.e. [ä] slightly leaning towards [ɑ]): http://www.bl.uk/learning/langlit/sounds/text-only/england/byker/ (listen for _m*a*rry_ and _h*a*ppy_). _[...] _


 The Geordie accent is a curious choice to represent "northern speakers", as it's probably the most "different" of all the northern accents. The /æ/ and other vowel sounds are very different from the accents of, say, Yorkshire and Lancashire (and even within Lancashire, Liverpool and Manchester accents are poles apart).


berndf said:


> _[...] _If you need to distinguish the modern southern /æ/ from the older one *than please find another letter.* It is simply so wrong to call it "a".  _[...]_ Calling anything but a central vowel "a" is ridiculous. For the back-a we have a special symbol, viz. [ɑ]. *The fronted [a] should be given a special symbol* too but the symbol "a" should stay where it rightfully belongs.</subjective>


  My understanding of IPA symbols has always been that [a] *is* fronted, and that [ä] is central. But if you really see a need for another letter, please feel free to suggest one.


timpeac said:


> _[...] _"Stadt" wasn't my choice. Someone picked that earlier and you didn't criticise it so I stayed with that. I will simply say that if a German uses the vowel they use in "Mann" to realise /æ/ when speaking English then they will have a better English accent, and be more readily understood than their classmate who uses the usual German interpretation of /æ/. _[...]_


 I plead guilty, m'lud. 'Twas I who chose _Stadt_. Had I thought about it, I would've gone for _Mann_ as more obvious, as it can be compared with English _man_.


berndf said:


> _[...] _The vowel of _Mann_ is also short.


 But can't the vowel of _man_ also be short?


berndf said:


> _[...] _And if you told a German to pronounce _hat_ like the German word _hat_, he would say _hut_.


 ... "a German"? I work, daily, with many Germans. Those recently arrived from Germany, with a good level of academic English, usually pronounce words like _hat_ as [hɛt] (or something close); whereas those who have been here a while, in frequent contact with native English speakers (predominantly BrE), or who have had such prolonged contact previously, come pretty close to [hat] (short, fronted), which to my ear is not so very different from _Mann._ That tends to support timpeac's suggestion that Germans are quite capable of making that sound.

<...>

Ws


*Moderator Note: Compilation of discussion from a different source ends here. Subsequent posts will have originated in this thread.*


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## berndf

Wordsmyth said:


> Sorry, Bernd, but that's a gross over-simplification. In that and other posts you refer to "northern" and "southern" English, but the variation in vowel sounds between north-east, north-west, south-east, south-west, east, Midlands, etc is enormous.
> As a reference for the Hackney /æ/, it's sufficient. As a reference for many other southern realisations of /æ/ it's not at all sufficient. Just to take one example, the realisation of the /æ/ in Somerset is is vastly differently from that in Hackney. Similarly ...
> The Geordie accent is a curious choice to represent "northern speakers", as it's probably the most "different" of all the northern accents. The /æ/ and other vowel sounds are very different from the accents of, say, Yorkshire and Lancashire (and even within Lancashire, Liverpool and Manchester accents are poles apart).


I never said anything about "southern English" or "northern English". I said "southern /æ/" and "northern /æ/". Different phoneme variants have different geographical distribution patterns. With regards to which dialects were affected by the Early Modern English a-fronting (not to be confused with Old English brightening), there is indeed a clear north-south divide and the provided samples are sufficiently representative for lack or presence of a-fronting in the respective broader regions.


Wordsmyth said:


> My understanding of IPA symbols has always been that [a] *is* fronted, and that [ä] is central.


That is a wee bit of a misconception. Only few languages are analysed in terms or a vowel trapezoid. For the analysis of the vast majority of languages, scholars think in terms of a vowel triangle, about like this. That's why you see so many vowel charts with a central "a" and people quite happily call it [a] and not [ä].


Wordsmyth said:


> But can't the vowel of _man_ also be short?


You take the sentence fragment out of context: _Mann_ has a short vowel, like _Stadt_, i.e. its realization is near open and not fully open and therefore overlays more with English /ʌ/ than with /æ/. I didn't compare it to English _man_.


Wordsmyth said:


> ... "a German"? I work, daily, with many Germans. Those recently arrived from Germany, with a good level of academic English, usually pronounce words like _hat_ as [hɛt] (or something close); whereas those who have been here a while, in frequent contact with native English speakers (predominantly BrE), or who have had such prolonged contact previously, come pretty close to [hat] (short, fronted)...


The context of my comment was Tim's suggestion Germans should be told to pronounce /æ/ like in German _Stadt_. I told him that this wouldn't work because the vowel of _Stadt _overlays with English /ʌ/. The question and the answer were both purely hypothetical. Nobody learns to pronounce /æ/ this way in Germany.


Wordsmyth said:


> ..., which to my ear is not so very different from _Mann._


The phenomenon that certain differences between sounds that stick out like a sore thumb to native speakers of of one language and are completely ignored by native speakers of another language, if the difference does not carry information in that language is not limited to Germans. The phenomenon can be observed in all languages, including English. And that is perfectly healthy. Why should the brain waist capacity on processing irrelevant information?


Wordsmyth said:


> That tends to support timpeac's suggestion that Germans are quite capable of making that sound.


Nobody said it would be impossible. It just needs a lot of practice (hearing and speaking) for a German to get this right. People who live and/or work in an English speaking environment will normal invest the effort, people in Germany who just occasionally use their school English to talk to foreigners normally won't.


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## wildan1

berndf said:


> I can only repeat myself. You asked why it is so difficult for Germans to separate /ɛ/ and /æ/ and what I told you is the answer. It is that simple. Germans can't hear the difference without an astronomic about of training and when you can't even perceive the difference it is very difficult to reproduce it. And if you told a German to pronounce _hat_ like the German word _hat_, he would say _hut_.


I'll second that--since my last name is a one-syllable word containing /æ/ as its only vowel, I have yet to meet a native German-speaker, even those many I've known who speak nearly perfect English, to pronounce my name correctly. It always comes out sounding like /ɛ/ to all native English-speakers who hear it.


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## Wordsmyth

berndf said:


> I never said anything about "southern English" or "northern English". I said "southern /æ/" and "northern /æ/".


Ummm ...


berndf said:


> _[...]_ the lowering in modern southern English _[...]_





berndf said:


> _[...] _But I still consider the difference between the American and modern southern British English absolutely minor _[...] _


OK, I know you were talking about the /æ/, but so was I. I quite agree with your "In general: the more northern the more central the pronunciation" as a broad trend (especially if you start in London and go in a straight line to Carlisle, ignoring everything to the left and right) — but I can't agree with your referring to "the southern English /æ/" and "the northern English /æ/": there are many and various southern and northern realisations of /æ/. 

If your description " "slightly behind central" (i.e. [ä] slightly leaning towards [ɑ])" applies to the Geordie vowel in _h*a*ppy_ and _m*a*rry_, then I don't see how it can adequately describe the various pronunciations of _h*a*ppy_ and _m*a*rry_ in, say, Yorkshire or Lancashire, because they really are different. I can't think of a northern accent outside of Northumberland and parts of Durham that has the sound that I think you mean by "leaning towards [ɑ]". I seriously recommend that you compare your Geordie example with some audios of people from Bradford and Manchester and Liverpool. 

Similarly, the Hackney /æ/ is nothing like the /æ/ of many other parts of the south. You said "the southern English /æ/ is on the "e"-side of this divide while the northern English /æ/ is on the "a"-side", but in fact the /æ/ of the south-west has absolutely nothing of the "e"-side about it: I'd describe it as all on the "a"-side, very long, and in some cases even having a touch of [ɑ] (sound familiar?). Try listening to some people from Somerset, Devon, West Dorset, Cornwall.

I'm not denying that the distinctions you describe exist. I'm just saying that "northern /æ/" and "southern /æ/" are grossly over-simplified tags for those distinctions, and that Geordie and Hackney are both minority pronunciations within the respective broader regions of 'north' and 'south', so they're perhaps not the best examples.  


berndf said:


> _[...] _Only view languages are analysed in terms or a vowel trapezoid. _[...] _


What are "view languages"?

Whatever they are, I'm sorely tempted to give up using IPA symbols if they mean different things to different people. I thought the whole idea was to have a common standard that could be understood in the same way by everyone. But now I discover that [a] can mean one thing to trapezoidal people and another to triangular people! I really don't see how that vowel triangle can serve to differentiate between the nuances we're talking about in this discussion. I also understand now why you said "Calling anything but a central vowel "a" is ridiculous". I suppose you were talking about a triangular "a", whereas I assumed it to be a trapezoidal "a". And forgive me if I'm wrong, Bernd, but haven't I seen you using symbols from the trapezoid before, when discussing the English language?

Ws


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## berndf

Wordsmyth said:


> I can't think of a northern accent outside of Northumberland and parts of Durham that has the sound that I think you mean by "leaning towards [ɑ]".


Agree. This is typical for for Northumbrian/Scots. Other northern /æ/ are fairly central.



Wordsmyth said:


> You said "the southern English /æ/ is on the "e"-side of this divide while the northern English /æ/ is on the "a"-side", but in fact the /æ/ of the south-west has absolutely nothing of the "e"-side about it


In the German vowel system, yes. The one belongs to the area of the German /ɛ/ and the other in the area of the German /a:/. Here is another less drastic pair: A fronted "a" (the lady from Watford) of about F2-F1=850 and on non-fronted (the lady from Notingham) with about F2-F1=550. The former is on the /ɛ/ side of the German phoneme boundary and the other on the /a:/ side. I am not quite sure about the exact location of the phoneme border but I'd think somewhere around F2-F1=750...800.



Wordsmyth said:


> What are "view languages"?


Sorry, typo. The word is "few".



Wordsmyth said:


> And forgive me if I'm wrong, Bernd, but haven't I seen you using symbols from the trapezoid before, when discussing the English language?


Yes, English is one of the languages where the trapezoid form is more adequate. This comparison of vowel charts is quite interesting.  The shows that the arrangement of phonemes follow different pattern. In Italian you see a typical single triangle system which is typical for a Romance language having lost phonemic length. The German system, a language with full length phonemicity, you see a typical two triangle system, a small one for short vowels and a large one for long vowel, as it also existed in Latin.

The English, system has a completely different shape where the triangle view doesn't fit.


----------



## Wordsmyth

OK. Alles klar.

Ws


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## berndf

Wordsmyth said:


> berndf said:
> 
> 
> 
> _[...] _The vowel of _Mann_ is also short.
> 
> 
> 
> But can't the vowel of _man_ also be short?
Click to expand...

I think in my answer to this I should have been more explicit: I was talking here of the quality and not of the quantity of /a/. I took something for granted I should have explained: Languages with fully phonemic vowel length like German (for stressed syllables), have separate vowel systems with separate phoneme boundaries for short and long vowels. This can lead to complex interaction between quantity, quality and stress in phoneme recognition. E.g. a shortened long "e" ([e:]>[e]) in a stressed syllable will flip perception from /e:/ to /ɪ/ but not in an unstressed syllable. And a fully open [ä] will always be perceived as long independent of actual quantity because there is no corresponding short vowel at this point in the vowel chart. This excludes realization of the vowel of _Mann_ as [ä] or [a] as this would change the phoneme recognition from /man/ to /ma:n/ and that is a different word (spelled _Mahn_).


----------



## timpeac

berndf said:


> I can only repeat myself. You asked why it is so difficult for Germans to separate /ɛ/ and /æ/ and what I told you is the answer. It is that simple. Germans can't hear the difference without an astronomic about of training and when you can't even perceive the difference it is very difficult to reproduce it. And if you told a German to pronounce _hat_ like the German word _hat_, he would say _hut_.



Yes, I see your point much clearer now. I think I'm still surprised, despite the difficulties, that the correct pronunciation isn't more widespread - and at least mentioned in school, even if it is permissible for students to approximate it. I remember in an early lesson of French being introduced to the word "fauteuil" and the teacher explaining the correct pronunciation, trying to get the class to say it (at which we failed miserably) and saying not to worry as it would not affect the exam result. To differentiate "man" from "men" (and all the other pairs, of course) seems so important that I'm surprised it's not flagged more as at least being an issue.

I was thinking about your comment about /æ/ only being diphthongised before a nasal. This might be true - but what I think I notice is that the American /æ/ is lengthened, at least in comparison to /ɛ/. I wonder if this is not a small factor in the issue. If a foreign speaker approximates /æ/ with a short vowel I think it will be heard as /ɛ/. However, if it were lengthened then I think it would have a greater chance of being interpreted as /æ/.


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## berndf

timpeac said:


> ...but what I think I notice is that the American /æ/ is lengthened, at least in comparison to /ɛ/. I wonder if this is not a small factor in the issue. If a foreign speaker approximates /æ/ with a short vowel I think it will be heard as /ɛ/. However, if it were lengthened then I think it would have a greater chance of being interpreted as /æ/.


Yes, length plays a significant role in AE /ɛ/ and /æ/ separation. Your perception is absolutely correct.


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## Ben Jamin

I’d like to understand this discussion better, so I’d like to ask:
Do the symbols used here mean:
[ɑ] - back
[a] - middle
[æ] – frontal
vowel placed at the bottom of the Vowel Quadrangle?


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## Dan2

I think the most common way the low (open) vowels are envisioned is as shown here:
http://dialectblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/Ipa-chart-vowels.png

For a vowel that is central and maximally low (for which no symbol is shown on the chart), "ä" is sometimes used (not to be confused with the sound represented by the German letter ä).  This is the vowel of the most common American pronunciation of words like "hot".

-----
I fully agree with timpeac and berndf that /æ/ tends to be significantly longer than /ɛ/, and that this length difference probably plays a role in the perception of one vowel vs the other.  (And that the length difference should be taught to learners of English!)  However it's important not to lose sight of the fact that the vowel _qualities _of /æ/ and /ɛ/ are different from each other in any given American dialect, and the quality difference is probably primary.  For ex., if I say "bet" and "bat" with a vowel length in "bet" (unnaturally) two or three times longer than that of "bat", another American will still understand the words correctly.

-----
Regarding the suggestion that Germans be taught to use the vowel of German "Mann" for English /æ/, here's a perspective from this side of the Atlantic: Both the "Mann" vowel, and the vowel that most Germans seem to use, their "Bett" vowel, sound quite wrong to me. But purely phonetically, the "Bett" vowel seems closer.  So I don't share the sense seen above that it is inexplicable why "Mann" isn't suggested to Germans.  But this difference in perception is surely due to the fact that Americans have an "/æ/" that is different from that of those who would suggest "Mann" as a model.  (I actually believe that "standard British English" /æ/ is closer to the American /æ/ of "hat" than it is to the vowel of German "Mann", but that's an argument I don't wish to get into. )


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## berndf

Dan2 said:


> I think the most common way the low (open) vowels are envisioned is as shown here:
> http://dialectblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/Ipa-chart-vowels.png
> 
> For a vowel that is central and maximally low, for which no symbol is shown on the chart, "ä" is sometimes used (not to be confused with the sound represented by the German letter ä).


I see no evidence of this happening. In languages where "a" is central people happily use [a] for this. Nobody uses [ä]; not even in English where the sound occurs in the diphthong [aI]. In languages where the "normal a" is central (probably the vast majority, at least of IE languages) people happily call it [a].


Dan2 said:


> This is the vowel of the most common American pronunciation of words like "hot".


I hear this only in Northern Midwestern accents. The standard American "short o" is still rather [ɑ].



Dan2 said:


> Regarding the suggestion that Germans be taught to use the vowel of German "Mann" for English /æ/, here's a perspective from this side of the Atlantic: Both the "Mann" vowel, and the vowel that most Germans seem to use, their "Bett" vowel, sound quite wrong to me. But purely phonetically, the "Bett" vowel seems closer.  So I don't share the sense seen above that it is inexplicable why "Mann" isn't suggested to Germans.  But this difference in perception is clearly due to the fact that Americans have an "/æ/" that is different from that of those who would suggest "Mann" as a model.


I think there was a bit of a misconception what really defined the German vowel in _Mann_, namely that not being fully open is part of this definition. I think, we have clarified this now.


----------



## Dan2

berndf said:


> Dan2 said:
> 
> 
> 
> For a vowel that is central and maximally low (for   which no symbol is shown on the chart), "ä" is sometimes used
> 
> 
> 
> I see no evidence of this happening.
Click to expand...

By "this happening" I think you mean "this use of "ä" becoming widespread".  I wasn't claiming that it is, or will become, widespread.  I simply said that the symbol is sometimes used, which is certainly true.  And the main reason I mentioned it was that I was responding to Ben Jamin's post, where he specifically asked about the symbols for low vowels from back to central to front.



berndf said:


> Dan2 said:
> 
> 
> 
> For a vowel that is central and maximally low (for   which no symbol is shown on the chart), "ä" is sometimes used ...  This  is  the vowel of the most common American pronunciation of words like  "hot".
> 
> 
> 
> I hear *this *only in Northern Midwestern accents. The standard American "short o" is still rather [ɑ].
Click to expand...

(berndf's "this" = [ä] in "hot", with [ä] as defined above.)
I disagree.  The famous Northern Midwestern "hot" vowel is so far fronted that it is at least an [a], and many Americans from other regions even perceive it as /æ/.  There's an often quoted experiment where words like "block" from phrases like "the block I live on" spoken by residents of Chicago were edited out and presented to Americans from other regions, who identified it as "black".

As for where the American "center of gravity" is for the "hot" vowel, I think [ɑ] is too back.


----------



## berndf

Dan2 said:


> As for where the American "center of gravity" is for the "hot" vowel, I think [ɑ] is too back.


Here, I hear the 1st and 3rd closer to [ɑ] and the 2nd closer to [a] (for the 2nd and 3rd I could verify this by formant analysis; the 1st is too loud and suffers from too much clipping for the piece of software I use). Do you agree?

Here is German _Naht _/na:t/. Would you except this as a "center of gravity" pronunciation of _not_?


----------



## Sepia

But it is not true that "Germans" do not recognize the difference between the "a"s. I have often heard people pronouncing one word with a totally BE "a" and in the next phrase an English name or a word with "ä". I keep asking them why they do that and get no really fulfilling answers other than this is the way English is taught. Why they teach wrong pronounciations, they cannot tell. It is absolutely sick. I also tell them (like somebody already mentioned) that a normal "a" like in "Stadt" would be closer to some variation of BE.


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## Dan2

berndf said:


> Here, I hear the 1st and 3rd closer to [ɑ] and the 2nd closer to [a]... Do you agree?


I don't agree about #1 being closer to [ɑ]; do you really think it's that far back? But even if we accept your judgments, and assign a backness value of 0 to [a], 1 to [ä], 2 to [ɑ], then the average of your three judgments is 1.3, to which the closest vowel is [ä].  I rest my case. 

But more to the point, I found two websites that offer pronunciations corresponding to each IPA vowel symbol:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPA_vowel_chart_with_audio
http://wso.williams.edu/~jdowse/ipa.html
I hear some differences between the two in the case of some vowels, but I would stand by the following claims:
1. The pronunciation of [ä] in the first is an excellent representation of the typical (or averaged) American pronunciation of the "hot" vowel.
2. In the case of the second website, which doesn't offer a pronunciation for [ä], [a] is too far front, and [ɑ] clearly too far back, to be typical of Amer "hot".  The vowel is between the two; again, [ä] would seem to be the optimal choice for a detailed representation. (I don't care for [ä] as the _symbol _for this vowel, but that's not relelvant to the discussion.)


berndf said:


> Here is German _Naht _/na:t/. Would you except this as a "center of gravity" pronunciation of _not_?


The excessive (for English) vowel length makes it hard to judge this sample as an English word.  In any case, I don't hear the vowel as [ä].

berndf> the 1st is too loud and suffers from too much clipping  for the piece of software I use
If you download and look at the actual file, clipping is minimal.  The sample should be analyzable.

In reporting Chicago "block" being heard as "black" by residents of other regions (work of Prof. Bill Labov) in my previous post, I didn't mean to leave the impression that this pronunciation is universal in Chicago (and other "northern cities").  Rather, the extreme fronting of "short o" (and associated changes) is typical of more "advanced" speakers of the "Northern Cities dialect".  Many (and in particular, it seems to me, the better educated) speakers in this region use more typical American vowels.


----------



## berndf

Dan2 said:


> I don't agree about #1 being closer to [ɑ]; do you really think it's that far back? But even if we accept your judgments, and assign a backness value of 0 to [a], 1 to [ä], 2 to [ɑ], then the average of your three judgments is 1.3, to which the closest vowel is [ä].  I rest my case.


I arrive at 1.67. I still don't put dots on a central [a], unless I have to compare it to a fronted [a].


Dan2 said:


> In any case, I don't hear the vowel as [ä].


But as what? (In your metric, _my ear_ would give it about 1.2)


----------



## Wordsmyth

berndf said:


> Yes, English is one of the languages where the trapezoid form is more adequate. This comparison of vowel charts is quite interesting. _[...] _


 I've just found time to look over that comparison of different vowel charts, for which I thank you, Bernd. It's fascinating, and will be useful in understanding comments from people with different native languages.

Interestingly, it seems to show why several of us think that most present-day BrE realisations of /æ/ (even southern) are closer to the German /a/ than to the German /ɛ/ — and that they're closer to the German /a/ than they are to the /æ/ of other languages.

In the other languages that are considered to have an /æ/ in those charts, the */æ/* is centred on F2-F1 values in the range of *950 to 1100* (Finland Swedish 950, Swedish 1090, AmE 1100). In the languages that are shown as having an /a/, the */a/* is centred in an F2-F1 range of *480 to 725* (the highest being German at 725). 

The "standard southern BrE" vowel called "/æ/" is centred around F2-F1=*800*, which is closer to the /a/ group than to the /æ/ group. 
In fact, within an overall range of *480 to 1100* (/a/ + /æ/), the German /a/ at *725 *and BrE "/æ/" at* 800* are cosy neighbours.

Also, with the German /a/ around *725* and the German /ɛ/ around *1300*, that puts the BrE "/æ/" at *800* very much closer to to the German /a/ than to the German /ɛ/.

I'm not talking about what some Germans' brains may _"hear"_ through relating sounds to what they're familiar with. I'm just talking about what the sounds _are._



berndf said:


> _[...] _Here is another less drastic pair: A fronted "a" (the lady from Watford) of about F2-F1=850 and on non-fronted (the lady from Notingham) with about F2-F1=550. The former is on the /ɛ/ side of the German phoneme boundary and the other on the /a:/ side. I am not quite sure about the exact location of the phoneme border but I'd think somewhere around F2-F1=750...800. _[...] _



I don't know what determines a phoneme border, but I guess it's pretty arbitrary: if you need an _absolute_ value, you have to draw a line somewhere. But for _comparative_ purposes I'm not sure it's of great importance. (It's like two people living just on either side of the border between, say, Belgium and France: they're likely to have more in common (socially, culturally and linguistically) than either of them does with someone at the other end of France). 

To my ear, the Nottingham lady's "man" is much closer to 'mainstream RP' (see below) than to a northern accent. If other natives hear it the same way as I do, that seems to point to the 'standard' BrE /æ/ being, as some of us were saying earlier, more of an [a] than an [ɛ]-influenced [æ]. Oh, and the Watford lady is a very particular case: her accent sounds like that of a particular ethnic group, not uncommon in Watford but not typical of 'standard' southern English pronunciation. 

Other examples of English [æ]/[a] distinction can be found on the British Library website (which you know, Bernd, as you sometimes link to it). In the section on RP vowel sounds, two examples are given of the pronunciation of the 'TRAP' lexical set: conservative RP is shown as /æ/; mainstream RP (the default in this list) is shown as /a/. Conservative RP is described as "a very traditional variety particularly associated with older speakers and the aristocracy", and is pretty rarely heard these days.

All of which makes me wonder why those charts on the University of Helsinki site (and others I've seen) credit "standard southern English" with having an
/æ/ but no /a/. The answer may lie in the British Library description of Received Pronunciation: "RP is probably the most widely studied and most frequently described variety of spoken English in the world, yet recent estimates suggest only 2% of the UK population speak it._ [...]_ RP is also a theoretical linguistic concept." (I guess "spoken English" should be taken as "spoken British English"). 

Could it be, then, that many discussions about "standard southern British English" aren't addressing the language actually spoken by the large majority of 'standard BE' speakers? 

It's true that some discussions are built around audio recordings of actual speakers, which should be more representative. That's reasonably true of targeted surveys (BL, BBC, ...) that identify authentic speakers, as long as it's recognised that samples often represent very localised speech, not the speech of a whole region. However, samples in sources such as Forvo can be misleading, because _locations_ are provided for contributors, but that's no guarantee of their linguistic _origins_ (like the Watford lady).

I'm sure, Bernd, that you'll come up with some flaws in my logic ...

Ws


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## berndf

I would like to draw your attention to the fact that the phonemes occupy areas in formant space and are't simply dots. Like Luxembourg is smaller than Russia, some phonemes occupy a smaller area and others a larger one. The diagrams you find in text books and that show vowels as dots are oversimplifications. Strictness and fuzziness of the borders depend on the language and cannot be measured in absolute terms. It basically depends on the proximity of other phonemes and the number of word confusions off-centre pronunciation can produce. If you look at the centre of gravity of the German /a/ (680/1400) you will notice that it is in the range of the BE /ʌ/. The issue is not whether German /a/ and BE /æ/ have a small or a big distance in parameter space but what word confusions the exchange of of the the two sounds may produce. The English word _hat _would simply become to close to _hut_ and _bat_ to close to _but_ to ensure reliably resolution of minimal pairs -- in English not in German. I don't deny that only a small shift would suffice to "push the German /a/ across the border". Some Northern German accents (notably in Schleswig-Holstein and Hamburg) front the short /a/ a little bit and that completely reshuffles the cards.

Back to the non-discrimination of /æ/ and /ɛ/; this then is not a kind of a "perceptual defect" of the German ear but it is simply that the low-front area of vowel space is not allocated in German and therefore free for variation and people do indeed vary. This also explains the observation many English speakers make that German do not _consistently_ pronounce /æ/ like /ɛ/ but erratically switch between the two. There is and inverse phenomenon: The space occupied by the English Schwa /ə/ is divided into two different Schwas in German, a more e-sounding one /ə/ and a more a-sounding one /ɐ/. The distinction is highly relevant in German because important minimal pairs, notable the separation of the suffixes _-e_ and _-er_ (_eine_ vs. _einer_) relies on the separation of these two phonemes. When the same English speaker pronounces the same word several times he/she seldom stays on only one side of the divide in German; words like _Edinburgh_ may sound [ɛdɪnbəɹə], [ɛdɪnbəɹɐ], [ɛdɪnbɐɹɐ] or [ɛdɪnbɐɹə] to a German without any apparent logic.


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## berndf

@Dan: I spend much of last night listening to radio/tv announcers mainly from LA. I know they are often trained very thoroughly to speak with an as neutral as possible accent so people from all parts of the country can relate to it. And I agree with you now: This group of speakers do indeed predominantly use fairly central realizations of the "short o" /ɑ/ which then means it should indeed be considered "neutral".


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## Wordsmyth

berndf said:


> I would like to draw your attention to the fact that the phonemes occupy areas in formant space and are't simply dots. _[...]_


 Of course, which is why I said "*centred* on/around". I was going to talk about overlap of the circular areas, but decided it was easier to compare the centres of those areas. 


berndf said:


> _[...] _Like Luxembourg is smaller than Russia, some phonemes occupy a smaller area and others a larger one. _[...]_


 Does that mean the use of circles on those charts is pointless (even misleading)? If the areas are meaningless, why didn't the author just show points? Where he shows two circles overlapping, does that mean that in reality they may not overlap, if one is really much smaller?

We know where Luxembourg's and Russia's borders are: each point is a known distance from a reference point within the country. We know which of the two countries we're in from other indicators: road signs, policemen's uniforms, etc, etc. Let's see if the analogy stands up for phonemes ....


berndf said:


> _[...] _Strictness and fuzziness of the borders depend on the language and cannot be measured in absolute terms. It basically depends on the proximity of other phonemes and the number of word confusions off-centre pronunciation can produce.. _[...]_


 OK, so the borders depend on the language, the proximity of other phonemes and the number of potential word confusions. For a given language (as those charts were), surely the proximity and the potential word confusions are well known to linguists. So why can't phoneme borders (for a given language) be measured in absolute terms?

... And if they can't, then in any discussion about whether a given sound belongs to the German /ɛ/ phoneme or /a/ phoneme (or the BrE /æ/ or /a/), we must all be right, because there's no definition of what a given phoneme is!

I'm not denying that there are fine distinctions between sounds that are evident to speakers of one language, but not picked up by speakers of another language. What I do find odd is the presumption in certain sources that southern English has no /a/. I've always thought that the definition of phonemes in terms of potential word confusion is very logical, but the transcription used by many sources doesn't seem to follow that principle. For the English word _bat_, an extreme 'Conservative RP' pronunciation is virtually [bɛt]; a slightly less extreme case (a bit more open) would be [bæt]; and mainstream RP (plus a lot of non-RP) is in the region of [bat] (not the German [a], but a long way from [æ]). 

Now you might argue that /æ/ is a Russia-sized phoneme, but look at word confusion. The first two pronunciations can be confused with the word _bet_. The third one can't be confused with anything (at least to an English ear) — And yet the phoneme used to represent the vowel in _bat_ is traditionally /æ/. So on a word-confusion basis, there seems to be an argument in favour of using the phoneme /a/ for _bat_, unless the International Phonetic Association wants to recognise that hardly any BrE speakers say "Do hev some jem", and thus follow your suggestion of inventing a new symbol for the English fronted "a".

I'm not trying to be at all dogmatic in any of the above. It's just that in many discussions I've witnessed and articles I've read where there's reference to phonemes, I've seen widely disparate views, often underlining a difference between theory and practice — so I'm fielding some thoughts in the hope of getting a better understanding of their use.

Ws


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## berndf

Wordsmyth said:


> So on a word-confusion basis, there seems to be an argument in favour of using the phoneme /a/ for _bat_, unless the International Phonetic Association wants to recognise that hardly any BrE speakers say "Do hev some jem", and thus follow your suggestion of inventing a new symbol for the English fronted "a".


I've been trying to understand what you are trying to say here. Do you mean _have _and _jam _with an only near open rather than full open vowel couldn't be distinguished from [ɛ]? Germans have difficulties to do that but in other languages, including many variants of English, this is not a problem. In other words, I contest that _Do_ _have some jam_ sounds like _Do hev some jem_, if you don't lower /æ/ as much as modern Southern speakers do.


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## Wordsmyth

I'll admit that there was a degree of approximation in my "hev some jem", and I suspect that we may be into the realm of subjective perception here. I wonder if I, with my native English ear, hear the difference between [æ] and [a] as being greater than you do (and perhaps greater than formant measurement might suggest?).

Let's take the range of sounds from [a] through [æ] to [ɛ] — where [a] is the open fronted vowel (not the central one), and is pronounced as here, which is the way I pronounce _hat_. 

Now let's compare [a], [æ] and [ɛ] here. (The [a] is somewhat distorted in this sample by being pronounced very long, so it gives the impression of being less fronted than in the _hat_ sample above, but it'll serve for this comparison). To my ear, that [æ] is much closer to the [ɛ] than it is to the [a]. 

Now I'll apply that to the _jam_ example: Starting from my own reference point of [hav ʤam], the pronunciation [hæv ʤæm] has a strong [ɛ]-influence and is that of the rapidly disappearing 'conservative RP' speech; and then there's [hɛv ʤɛm], as heard from older members of the royal family and a very few others of that ilk (plus a good number of Germans ). So no, I'm not saying that near open [æ] can't be distinguished from open-mid [ɛ]. My somewhat jocular reference to "hev some jem" would broadly cover both the [æ] and [ɛ] versions: to people whose _jam_ has an [a], both of those other versions tend to sound like vowels with different degrees of "e"-ness (a term used by a fellow Brit with whom I was discussing this today). 

Note that my comparison didn't refer to the [æ]-to-[ɛ] vowel sounds of certain south-eastern regional accents in words like _have _and_ jam_: somehow those have a very different quality from the 'conservative/royal' versions. Nonetheless, the perception by the [a]-crowd of differing degrees of "e"-ness would still apply.

Ws


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## timpeac

I've been mulling over the past few posts on the audibility of [ɛ] versus [æ]. My initial reaction is that I would hear a [æ] as /ɛ/ - particularly if all other indications in the accent (and I suppose visuals) do not suggest an older RP speaker. _However_, I also have to admit that I haven't often, if ever, been confused by the speech of an older RP speaker when I hear it in films etc (and admittedly then I am prepped to hear an older speech variety). I have been - even if briefly - confused on this point by the speech of some otherwise extremely talented German linguists speaking English.

I suspect this might go back to something that I mentioned briefly earlier. /æ/ is realised longer than /ɛ/ (whether it's pronounced as [æ] or higher). I think that might be where foreign speakers who do not use [a] are going wrong. Whether they get [æ] perfectly correct or whether they edge towards [ɛ] I think you need to lengthen it. Conversely I suspect that [ɛ:] might be heard as a realisation of /æ/ - i.e. intelligible, albeit old-fashioned and noticeably "not how I would say it".

As a secondary thought that occurs to me only now - the length issue I mention there might also be why modern BE speakers feel so strongly about this issue. The realisation of /æ/ as [a] is _not _lengthened (in new contrast to the usual long realisation of /ɑ/?), so we have not only changed height but also length of this phoneme and it really changes our interpretation of this phoneme's boundaries.


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## Nucleos

I feel some disagreements on what is called Cardinal Vowels... One fine new URL to agree on cardinal vowels: http://www.madore.org/~david/misc/linguistic/cardinal-vowels/


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## berndf

Wordsmyth said:


> Let's take the range of sounds from [a] through [æ] to [ɛ] — where [a] is the open fronted vowel (not the central one), and is pronounced as here, which is the way I pronounce _hat_.


To my ear it is a nice specimen of a (Southern) British [æ]. To describe my perception, it is close to my idea what an "a" should sound like but does not yet have the "round, balanced" sound of an "a" but the "quacking" touch of [æ] and [ɛ]. I listened to many sounds in the vicinity of "a" comparing there formants to my perception. I _think_, I perceive a balanced, clean and pleasant "a" when the F1-F2 distance is exactly one octave. If it is less I perceive the sound as "dark" ([ɑ]-like) and if it is greater as "quacking" ([æ]-like).

The sound in the recoding has an F1-F2 distance of more than one octave. Interestingly, it is _neither_ fully fronted _nor_ fully open. Its average formats are 700/1500: that is a sound somewhere in the middle between [æ] and [ɐ]. If you compare that with an AE [æ], the BE sound is only marginally more open while the main difference is that it is not fully fronted (F2 is about 250Hz less) in BE. This also lowers the F2/F1 ratio. It seems that the British and the German ears don't work that differently after all: The curial parameter for the perception of [æ]-ishness vs. [a]-ishness seems to be the F2/F1 ratio and not openness.


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## Ben Jamin

I think that all "not professional phoneticians" have dropped off this thread.


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## Wordsmyth

.
No, there's one definitely "not professional phonetician" still here.


berndf said:


> To my ear it is a nice specimen of a (Southern) British [æ]. To describe my perception, it is close to my idea what an "a" should sound like but does not yet have the "round, balanced" sound of an "a" but the "quacking" touch of [æ] and [ɛ]
> _[...]
> _I _think_, I perceive a balanced, clean and pleasant "a" when the F1-F2 distance is exactly one octave.


 I've just said "The cat sat on the mat" to a German colleague. I asked him if he found anything unbalanced, unclean or unpleasant about my vowels. He made me repeat it, gave it deep thought, then said "Not at all" — but then he isn't a phonetician.

So I won't be wearing sackcloth and ashes — but perhaps I should contact all my Southern Brit friends and get them to change their names to Donald or Daffy, so we can keep on quacking! (But of course that'll be [kwakɪŋ], not [kwækɪŋ] or [kwɛkɪŋ] ).

Ws


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## Dan2

Wordsmyth said:


> where [a] is the open fronted vowel (not the central one), and is pronounced as here, which is the way I pronounce _hat_.


Some comments from another not-professional-phonetician:

Thanks  for posting this - it helps anchor the discussion.  I  don't claim to be an expert on IPA vowel representation, but I too hear  the above vowel as IPA [a].  What I can say with _certainty _is that it is NOT the  typical American "hat" vowel (which I hear as IPA [æ]).



berndf said:


> To my ear it is a nice specimen of a (Southern) British [æ].


You mean Southern British /æ/, right?  That is, a vowel associated with the traditional British-English _phoneme _/æ/.  (By writing [æ], you seem to be suggesting that it is an "æ" in absolute IPA terms, which is not how Wordsmyth and I hear it.)


berndf said:


> To describe my perception, it is close to my idea what an "a" should  sound like but does not yet have the "round, balanced" sound of an "a"  but the "quacking" touch of [æ] and [ɛ].


To me, it has NO touch of [æ] or [ɛ]. I say this not to suggest you are wrong but just to illustrate how people with different backgrounds hear things differently.


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## Wordsmyth

Thanks Dan. I was starting to feel a little lonely out there.

This question of perception is all-important. It makes me think of noise measurement in decibels. The human ear/brain combination doesn't hear the same as what measuring instruments record, so it was necessary to invent PNdB (perceived noise decibels); even that wasn't enough, so now we have EPNdB (effective perceived noise decibels). I await with impatience the arrival of some sort of 'EPFA' (effective perceived formant analysis).

And then there's your very good point about people's perception being affected by different backgrounds. Maybe we need an 'EPBCFA' (that's BC for background-conditioned) — and maybe we could then have symbols like [a]b and [a]dwt (that's b for Bernd, etc). OK, that would get me thrown out of a phoneticians' conference, but behind my flippancy is the serious thought that maybe conventional analysis doesn't have all the answers.

Ws


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## berndf

Dan2 said:


> To me, it has NO touch of [æ] or [ɛ]. I say this not to suggest you are wrong but just to illustrate how people with different backgrounds hear things differently.


It is very close to the border for me too. I thought it might be interesting what kind of perceptual qualities people associate with sounds. In the end it is very similar to colours. People can maybe agree on which objects are ochre and which are brown but it is very difficult to communicate how you perceive ochre-ness and brown-ness. I wanted to make a start in describing what kind of qualities I associate with [æ], [a] and [ɑ].

I find it interesting that people seem to perceive the British /æ/ as a cardinal vowel, fully open and fully fronted, which seems not to be the case. If, now, de-fronting of [æ] can be perceptually confused with lowering it suggest that the F2/F1 ratio may indeed be key for [æ]-[a] separation for both, German and English speakers, and that the main difference might simply be that the value for this ratio that separates the two sounds may just be slightly higher for English than from German speakers. If the _real_ tendency in BE (compared to AE) is indeed de-fronting rather than lowering of [æ], then I can accept the idea that the BE /æ/ moves closer the German /a/ and English hut, German hat and English hat really lie on one line, something like this:


Just an idea.


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## Ben Jamin

berndf said:


> It is very close to the border for me too. I thought it might be interesting what kind of perceptual qualities people associate with sounds. In the end it is very similar to colours. People can maybe agree on which objects are ochre and which are brown but it is very difficult to communicate how you perceive ochre-ness and brown-ness. I wanted to make a start in describing what kind of qualities I associate with [æ], [a] and [ɑ].
> 
> 
> I find it interesting that people seem to perceive the British /æ/ as a cardinal vowel, fully open and fully fronted, which seems not to be the case. If, now, de-fronting of [æ] can be perceptually confused with lowering it suggest that the F2/F1 ratio may indeed be key for [æ]-[a] separation for both, German and English speakers, and that the main difference might simply be that the value for this ratio that
> separates the two sounds may just be slightly higher for English than from German speakers. If the _real_ tendency
> in BE (compared to AE) is indeed de-fronting rather than lowering of [æ], then I can accept the idea that the BE /æ/ moves closer the German /a/ and English hut, German hat and English hat really lie on one line, something like this:
> View attachment 11780
> Just an idea.


There is something I don't understand here. If a vowel is fully open, doesn't it mean that it is also lowest possible, at the bottom line of the quadrangle? How can it be even lower then?


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## berndf

Ben Jamin said:


> There is something I don't understand here. If a vowel is fully open, doesn't it mean that it is also lowest possible, at the bottom line of the quadrangle? How can it be even lower then?


The development in modern RP is often described as _lowering of /æ/ towards [a]_. I'm throwing the counter-hypothesis into the ring for discussion that the development rather is _de-fronting of /æ/ towards [ɐ]_.


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## Ben Jamin

I think that the notion that the perception of sounds is somehow similar to perception of colours is very plausible. People tend to classify both into already well known categories. If your language doesn't have a sound as an independent phoneme, then they will tend to treat them as allophones of those familiar to them. People not familiar with the /æ/ phoneme wil describe it either as a low /e/ or a very frontal /a/.


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## Ben Jamin

berndf said:


> The development in modern RP is often described as _lowering of /æ/ towards [a]_. I'm throwing the counter-hypothesis into the ring for discussion that the development rather is _de-fronting of /æ/ towards [ɐ]_.



The IPA chart places the/æ/ not at the bottom of the quadrangle, but somewhat higher. The conclusion is: it's not fully open, and it can be lowered. But maybe it was wrong for me to equal openness with height?


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## berndf

Ben Jamin said:


> The IPA chart places the/æ/ not at the bottom of the quadrangle, but somewhat higher. The conclusion is: it's not fully open, and it can be lowered.


Yes, [æ] can be lowered. The question I am raising is whether this is what's really happening.


Ben Jamin said:


> But maybe it was wrong for me to  equal openness with height?


_Open _and _low _and _close _and _high _are strict synonyms.


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## timpeac

What does your software make of the /æ/ in the WR UK pronunciation of happy, Bernd? http://www.wordreference.com/definition/happy

By the way - does no one buy my suggestion that a possibly important distinction of the old and new UK realisations of /æ/ might be one of length, with the old-fashioned one being a slightly longer vowel?


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## Ben Jamin

I have once read an article, where the author claimed that vowel length is no longer an important part of phoneme recognition in British English. Are the two things sides of the same phenomenon?


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## timpeac

Ben Jamin said:


> I have once read an article, where the author claimed that vowel length is no longer an important part of phoneme recognition in British English. Are the two things sides of the same phenomenon?


Yes, I think so. For example, the "i" of "bit" /ɪ/ is lower and shorter than the "i" of "beat" /i:/. Whether you claim that height or length is the important factor is really a matter of choice as far as I can see. If you pronounced the sequence [bɪ:t] then I think a native speaker would hear the word "beat" even though the vowel used was that of "bit". It would sound "odd" but I think that "beat" would be the word identified as being pronounced oddly. Similarly I think [bit] would be heard as "bit".


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## berndf

timpeac said:


> What does your software make of the /æ/ in the WR UK pronunciation of happy, Bernd? http://www.wordreference.com/definition/happy


Will do when I am in front of my computer at home tonight.


timpeac said:


> By the way - does no one buy my suggestion that a possibly important distinction of the old and new UK realisations of /æ/ might be one of length, with the old-fashioned one being a slightly longer vowel?


I think we all did. In AE it is a matter of course that length difference supports the quality difference. In newer RP the length difference is less important because the quality difference is greater. But I think, by and large, the vowel in _bad_ is still longer than that in_ bed_. Care must be taken to compare the lengths of /æ/ and /ɛ/ only in comparable phonetic contexts: The vowel in _bad_ is longer than that in _bat_ and the vowel in _bed_ it longer than that in _bet_. Hence, a comparison of_ bat_ and _bed_, e.g., would yield inconclusive results.


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## timpeac

berndf said:


> Will do when I am in front of my computer at home tonight.
> I think we all did. In AE it is a matter of course that length difference supports the quality difference.


And I think this might be the key point in terms of understanding foreign speakers. We understand RP accent in old films and we understand American accents but part of that is because of the length, and our brains have subconsciously learnt to remark this. So when we hear a foreign speaker our brains don't automatically "cut them some slack" by identifying a certain accent and assigning the phoneme boundaries that we have learnt go with that accent. So unless the speech of the foreign speaker has markedly US features, accent or otherwise, we don't subconsciously suspect that something that sounds /ɛ/ish to us might be /æ/, particularly if there isn't the length difference to give us a clue.


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## berndf

timpeac said:


> We understand RP accent in old films and we understand American accents but part of that is because of the length, and our brains have subconsciously learnt to remark this.


It would be interesting in how far you really understand these phonemes and in how far the correct words are only identified by context. I once asked a friend, he lives in Warwickshire and works in the City to where he daily commutes, for a _pan_ and despite paying attention the say the vowel very a-ish he gave me a _pen_. When he finally understood what I meant, he said I should have said _frying-pan_. He continued they (the English) were exposed to so many different accents, native and foreign, that they can't distinguish such subtleties any more.


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## timpeac

berndf said:


> IHe continued they (the English) were exposed to so many different accents, native and foreign, that they can't distinguish such subtitles any more.


subtleties do you mean? I would say the exact opposite. English is spoken in so many accents in so many countries as a first language and by so many as a second language that I think the English (language I mean here rather than country) ear is especially good at assigning new realisations to phonemes and understanding vastly differing accents as long as the assignment of a given realisation is consistently applied to that phoneme. I think that speakers of languages that are not used to hearing foreign speakers pronounce them are the harshest on insisting that a certain sound be "correctly" pronounced and genuinely misunderstanding it if it is not.

I would understand your friend's point only if he were still in "accent placement and phoneme assignment" mode and was therefore not assigning the sound /pan/ to the word "pan" simply because that would have been the normal assumption if a native said that. On top of that he's right - "pan" is short for "saucepan" not "frying pan" so saying "pan" for "frying pan" would be confusing. At least it is to me - I would never refer to a frying pan as a pan, even if it were the only container there and so there was no risk of ambiguity.


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## berndf

timpeac said:


> subtleties do you mean?


Yes, of course.


timpeac said:


> I would say the exact opposite. English is spoken in so many accents in so many countries as a first language and by so many as a second language that I think the English (language I mean here rather than country) ear is especially good at assigning new realisations to phonemes and understanding vastly differing accents as long as the assignment of a given realisation is consistently applied to that phoneme.


Or they have become very good at disambiguating unclear phonemes from context, disregarding phonetics.


timpeac said:


> On top of that he's right - "pan" is short for "saucepan" not "frying pan" so saying "pan" for "frying pan" would be confusing. At least it is to me - I would never refer to a frying pan as a pan, even if it were the only container there and so there was no risk of ambiguity.


He could have fetched me a _soucepan _too; I gave no context that would  have restricted the choice to either _pens_ and _frying-pans_. So, that's not a  valid argument.


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## timpeac

berndf said:


> His words, not mine.


Ah ok - strange choice of term and looked like a "predict-a-text" error. 


berndf said:


> Or they have become very good at disambiguating unclear phonemes from context, disregarding phonetics.


 I don't think so or your brain would be whirring all the time someone without your accent speaks. It whirs away for the first few minutes identifying sounds and associating phonemes and then relaxes, matching those sounds and phonemes even in new words. 


berndf said:


> He could have fetched me a _soucepan _too; I gave no context that would  have restricted the choice to either _pens_ and _frying-pans_. So, that's not a  valid argument.


Well, it was your friend's argument, not mine. So he didn't mean you should have said frying pan but rather that, according to him, "pan" is unintelligible on its own without some further context, or at least indistinguishable from any other pVn realisation. I think that's nonsense - I'll test that tonight by asking my partner, in a context that would make it a bizarre request, to give me a pan and see if I'm understood or not. I wonder if the problem was one of length rather than quality as the "a" of "pan" is a lot longer than the "e" of "pen".


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## berndf

timpeac said:


> ... according to him, "pan" is unintelligible on its own without some further context, or at least indistinguishable from any other pVn realisation.


At least from pen. I don't think it was indistinguishable from pin.


timpeac said:


> I think that's nonsense - I'll test that tonight by asking my partner, in a context that would make it a bizarre request, to give me a pan and see if I'm understood or not.


Tell us what happened. Maybe I should have mentioned that my friend had a very thick native East Midlands accent when he first came to Lʊndən. So, he had an additional difficulty adjusting to the way people spoke at his workplace.


timpeac said:


> I wonder if the problem was one of length rather than quality as the "a" of "pan" is a lot longer than the "e" of "pen".


I am very much aware of there length-quality interactions and, of course, I lengthened the vowel.


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## timpeac

berndf said:


> Tell us what happened. Maybe I should have mentioned that my friend had a  very thick native East Midlands accent when he first came to Lʊndən.  So, he had an additional difficulty adjusting to the way people spoke at  his workplace.


Ok - did it. I asked "can you get me a pan  please?" It was out of the blue, and perhaps not a context that would  make asking for a pan _bizarre _but it was after talking about nothing  to do with cooking, so no reason to think of "pan" from context other  than it's 17.30 and we haven't yet cooked. The reply was, while going to  the kitchen and rattling in the cupboard, "what size pan do you want?" I  absolutely swear that was the answer and I'm not just saying that to  support my post!!!


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## Wordsmyth

berndf said:


> _[...] _and despite paying attention the say the vowel very a-ish he gave me a _pen_. _[...]_


 I've no idea whether you have any trace of German accent when you speak English, Bernd, so this may or may not be pertinent — but given your conviction that the typical English /æ/ is less a-ish than some of us think, isn't it possible that your "very a-ish" vowel was still e-ish enough to make your friend think he heard_ pen_?


berndf said:


> _[...]_ Maybe I should have mentioned that my friend had a very thick native East Midlands accent when he first came to Lʊndən. So, he had an additional difficulty adjusting to the way people spoke at his workplace. _[...]_


 Isn't that something of a _non sequitur_? In my experience, having a strong regional accent doesn't mean that people have difficulty understanding others with different accents (except in the extreme case where a person has never been exposed to different English accents, which is a highly unlikely scenario these days).


timpeac said:


> _[...] _I think the English (language I mean here rather than country) ear is especially good at assigning new realisations to phonemes and understanding vastly differing accents as long as the assignment of a given realisation is consistently applied to that phoneme. I think that speakers of languages that are not used to hearing foreign speakers pronounce them are the harshest on insisting that a certain sound be "correctly" pronounced and genuinely misunderstanding it if it is not. _[...]_


 I agree, Tim. I work in a very polyglot environment, and it's often the Spanish who have a problem in understanding any foreigner's deviation from a 'normal' pronunciation, whether it's in Spanish or in other languages. I think this is partly due (in the case of many of them) to a relative lack of exposure to foreign language variations; but also to the conditioning resulting from their own very systematic language: Spanish has some 25 phonemes represented by about 40 graphemes. Compare that with the 44 phonemes of English represented by about 390 graphemes! 

It's not surprising that the average Spanish mind boggles at high levels of variation in language. Conversely, the average English speaker's mind (even from the East Midlands) should have a head-start in distinguishing subtleties.

Ws


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## berndf

timpeac said:


> What does your software make of the /æ/ in the WR UK pronunciation of happy, Bernd? http://www.wordreference.com/definition/happy


I don't know if this is computer generated or just very aggressively compressed. I can't make heads and tails of the wave forms. F2 seems to be somewhere between 1500 and 1600 but I can't gage F1.


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## berndf

Wordsmyth said:


> ...isn't it possible that your "very a-ish" vowel was still e-ish enough to make your friend think he heard_ pen_?


Well, it is the opposite direction: You hear /æ/ as [a] where I don't. On the other hand I hear an [a] in English _but_ what you probably don't.


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## berndf

timpeac said:


> I  absolutely swear that was the answer and I'm not just saying that to  support my post!!!


Sure, my friend's statement came as a surprise to me too. I just found it noteworthy to report.
<..>


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## timpeac

berndf said:


> I don't know if this is computer generated or just very aggressively compressed. I can't make heads and tails of the wave forms. F2 seems to be somewhere between 1500 and 1600 but I can't gage F1.


Oh, that's a shame. Can we say anything about the pronunciation from just knowing the F2, or is only the relative numbers that are important? Is there a soundbite for another WR UK /æ/ word which is clearer?


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## berndf

Wordsmyth said:


> Isn't that something of a _non sequitur_? In my experience, having a strong regional accent doesn't mean that people have difficulty understanding others with different accents (except in the extreme case where a person has never been exposed to different English accents, which is a highly unlikely scenario these days).


There is one thing that might be significant: As a native speaker from the Midlands he probably doesn't have a native /æ/-/ʌ/ phoneme boundary but must have learned the distinction later as /ʌ/ doesn't exist in his native accent and even people from the region who otherwise speak fairly standard don't have /ʌ/ in their phoneme repertoire.


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## berndf

timpeac said:


> Oh, that's a shame. Can we say anything about the pronunciation from just knowing the F2, or is only the relative numbers that are important? Is there a soundbite for another WR UK /æ/ word which is clearer?


Unfortunately, F1 is crucial. If it is around 700, it would corroborate my theory that the tendency is de-fronting; if it is above 800, we have significant lowering.


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## Wordsmyth

berndf said:


> On the other hand I hear an [a] in English _but_ what you probably don't.


 Sorry, Bernd, I can't work out what you meant by that bit. But I may not have been clear enough in what I said. I just meant that if you have any natural trace of that German tendency we've discussed, to pronounce the English /æ/ with a leaning towards /ɛ/, then in spite of your attention to pronouncing _pan_ with an "a-ish vowel", perhaps it still held enough German 'e-ishness' to be interpreted as _pen_ (especially by someone with an East Midlands ear). 

That was pure surmise, of course, because I've no idea what accent you have in English. I could well imagine the theory being relevant if it had been the Queen asking your friend for a pan.

Ws


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## berndf

Wordsmyth said:


> Sorry, Bernd, I can't work out what you meant by that bit.


If even I as a German hear myself saying [a] rather than [æ] then a English speaker must hear it even more as a [a].


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## Wordsmyth

Ah, I get it. I guess it depends which end you start from: glass half-full or half-empty. I was assuming you were lowering /æ/. It seems you were substituting a German /a/. 

Ws


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## berndf

timpeac said:


> Yes, I think so. For example, the "i" of "bit" /ɪ/ is lower and shorter than the "i" of "beat" /i:/. Whether you claim that height or length is the important factor is really a matter of choice as far as I can see. If you pronounced the sequence [bɪ:t] then I think a native speaker would hear the word "beat" even though the vowel used was that of "bit". It would sound "odd" but I think that "beat" would be the word identified as being pronounced oddly. Similarly I think [bit] would be heard as "bit".


This interaction between quality and quantity is in itself not a sign of loss of length phonemicity. It exist also in languages where length is indisputably phonemic, like Latin or German. I think the best characterization of length-phonemicity is when a language has different vowel-_systems_ for long and short vowels. [bɪ:t] would then be understood as /be:t/: suppose, as in Latin or German, the nearest long vowels are /i:/ and /e:/ and the nearest short vowels /ɪ/ and /ɛ/; then [ɪ:] is closest to /e:/. This is, e.g., the reason for the _ē/i_-merger in Vulgar Latin that is responsible for _dē_ becoming _de_ in French but _di _in Italian.


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## Nino83

In English /e/, /æ/ and /ʌ/ change their position at the same time.

In Northern English (Lancashire and also Yorkshire) we have, respectively, [ɛ], [ä] and [ɜ ̴  ɤ̞], in Western Midlands, West Country, [e̞], [a] and [ɜ ̴ ɐ], in Australia [e], [ɛ] and [ä].
In Traditional Cockney /æ/ was/is [ɛ] and /ʌ/ was/is [ä] but:

a) Beaken says that, differently from Australian accent, in Cockney /e/ is lower (it is not [e]), so /e/ and /æ/ partially overlap, in the [ɛ] area, but they differ because /æ/ is lengthened and /e/ has a palatal off-glide before a voiced consonant.



> [ɪ̠] may be more central than in RP, and [æ] and [ɒ] less open: [ɛ] and [ɔ], respectively (Wells 1982: 305) The pronunciation of the word Saturday, for example, is sometimes [ˈsɛʔədɪi].[...]and that RP [ʌ] is in general noticeably more open in TC, resulting in [a], as in come [kʰam][...]*Instead of [ɛ], broad Cockney may occasionally have closer allophones with a palatal off-glide before a voiced consonant: bedroom [b̥ɛi dɹʊʉm], leg [lɛi ɡ̊]*.



http://diposit.ub.edu/dspace/bitstream/2445/37522/1/618486.pdf



> Beaken (1971: 192-193) writes that there may be some confusion between TRAP and STRUT and that, in general, there is crowding in the vowel space of the short vowels DRESS, TRAP and STRUT, leading to an overlap of DRESS and TRAP in the [ɛ] area (as Matthews hinted at above). *Beaken argues that a feature of adult Cockney is therefore to lengthen TRAP in some positions.*



b) Silversten says that also in Cockney /e/ is [e] and /æ/ is [ɛ], like in Australian.



> Sivertsen (1960: 47) has a KIT quality close to RP, between front and central and between close and mid-close. She describes *DRESS as front and between mid-close and midopen,[e]* ( (Sivertsen 1960: 53). She also gives quite a *close realisation of TRAP, using the symbol [ɛ] *( and stating that it is slightly closer than RP (Sivertsen 1960: 59).



http://eprints.lancs.ac.uk/1081/1/TorgersenKerswill8pdf.pdf

Internal and external motivation in phonetic change: dialect levelling outcomes for an English vowel shift

In the US, Southern American English and African American English have [e], [ɛ] and [ʌ] (called by Labov Southern Vowel Shift).

So, where /æ/ is open central [ä] (Northern England), /e/ is mid-open [ɛ] and /ʌ/ is mid [ɜ ̴  ɤ̞] (central or back).
Where /æ/ is higher [ɛ], /e/ is higher [e] (Australia, Southern American English, African American English, Cockney according to Silversten) or is mid (Cockney according to Beaken) but in this case /æ/ is longer, and /ʌ/ can be open central [ä] (like in Australian and Cockney) or mid [ʌ] (like in Southern American English and African American English).

Now, if it is true that in Southwest England /æ/ is moving toward [a], it should be true that /ʌ/ is moving back and up towards /ɑː/, and it is what Cheshire says (calling it Multicultural London accent).

Do you find that today /ʌ/ is higher and backer that it was in RP and in Cockney?


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## Nino83

About London Accent, Trudgill in his book "Dialects in Contact" says that the Australian type (with _bet_ [e] _bat_ [ɛ] _but_ [ä]) reflects the London accent as it was spoken during the beginning of the XIX century and that these vowels are still used by the oldest people in Norwich and in Essex (this book is dated 1986).
So, probably, during the XIX century probably /e/ lowered before /æ/ and the merger was avoided by the lengthening of /æ/ (of that Beaken spoke, in his book written in 1971, "a study of phnological development in a primary school population of east London") and, in recent times, by its lowering and backing (like Cheshire writes in "Ethnicity, friendship network and social practices as the motor of dialect change: linguistic innovation in London" about *some younger people* in *some parts* of London).

Anyway, I tend to agree with Bernd on the fact that the /æ/ of Southwest England, of the London area, is still too fronted, with an F2 = 1558, vs. the German one with an F2 = 1225 for /a:/ and 1309 for /a/, while that of Liverpool has F2 = 1343.

Here all data, F1/F2 (male speakers) of English /æ/ and German /a:/, /a/ and /ɐ/ (unstressed /er/ in German):

English /æ/:
Newcastle: 694/*1333* 
Liverpool: 730/*1393 *
East Yorkshire: 700/1463
Birmingham:679/1479
London: 751/*1558*
Cornwall:641/*1560 *
East Anglia:692/*1717 *

German:
/a:/:639/*1225 *
/a/:608/*1309 *
/ɐ/:*503*/1372

English /ʌ/:
Liverpool:*496*/1130
London:*623*/1370

http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=7341932
http://www.ipds.uni-kiel.de/kjk/pub_exx/aipuk32/mpas.pdf

This is confirmed, listening some word on Forvo.
For example, one of the most appreciated users, TopQuark (London), who defines his accent "RP" and says that "though my Yorkshire roots are occasionally betrayed by an instinctive flat northern vowel, as in /wɒn/", has a very fronted /æ/.
For example, in the word hi-hat, even the Canadian Drosophilist has a more central /æ/ than him.
In words like http://it.forvo.com/word/at/ and http://it.forvo.com/word/bat/#en his /æ/ is not so fronted and raised like that of greengobbie92 (Australian) (who has clearly [ɛ]), but is not so open like that of enfield (Midlands).

The vowel /æ/ in Southeast England is still too fronted for "Continental" standards, this is why Germans, Scandinavians, Italians, the Portuguese, Greeks, Dutch, perceive this vowel like an [ɛ].

I agree also on the fact that there should be a new symbol for the (Southern) British /æ/ (the French /a/ is clearly more central, in fact it is perceived by us like an Italian /a/), that could be the small capital letter /ᴀ/ (like it is in CanIPA), and use the symbol /a/ for the open central vowel, that is the most common in languages. It is very strange that one has to write /ä/ every time one has to differenciate an open central vowel from a, very rare, open front vowel. But, probably, this reform is not made because one should have to re-write o to interpret older works.


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## Nino83

Wordsmyth said:


> Let's take the range of sounds from [a] through [æ] to [ɛ] — where [a] is the open fronted vowel (not the central one), and is pronounced as here, which is the way I pronounce _hat_.



For my hear the vowel in this sample is an [a].



berndf said:


> Yes, [æ] can be lowered. The question I am raising is whether this is what's really happening.
> _Open _and _low _and _close _and _high _are strict synonyms.



I've found another study where vowels are divided for age. They are all male speakers and "With one exception in the oldest category, the subjects were students, lecturers, professors and others working within, or retired from, the University of Cambridge. All considered themselves to be RP speakers, and were judged as such by the second author".

/æ/ F1/F2:
644/1678 (65+)
693/1579 (50–55)
696/1574 (35–40)
*917*/*1473* (20–25)

http://www.ling.cam.ac.uk/sarah/docs/hawkinsmidgley_jipa05.pdf

It seems that /æ/ is lowered expecially in the speech of the youngest speakers (under 25), also if F2 is 150 hz away from that of Newcastle and 80Hz away from that of Liverpool, but if this is the situation, it's probable that /æ/ is pronounced like in the sample Wordsmyth linked, and this vowel is very similar to the Northern English one and to the "European" (continental) /a/.


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## berndf

Nino83 said:


> http://www.ling.cam.ac.uk/sarah/docs/hawkinsmidgley_jipa05.pdf
> 
> It seems that /æ/ is lowered expecially in the speech of the youngest speakers (under 25), also if F2 is 150 hz away from that of Newcastle and 80Hz away from that of Liverpool, but if this is the situation, it's probable that /æ/ is pronounced like in the sample Wordsmyth linked, and this vowel is very similar to the Northern English one and to the "European" (continental) /a/.


I have always been skeptical of whether there is such a thing as a vowel parallelogram. I could always relate better to the idea of a vowel triangle with a single _a_-sound, not a front or a back one. The diagram on p.187 seems to support this view for modern RP.


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## Nino83

berndf said:


> I could always relate better to the idea of a vowel triangle with a single _a_-sound, not a front or a back one. The diagram on p.187 seems to support this view for modern RP.



This is true also for AmE and any other variety. What changes is the lowest vowel,  /æ/ in youngest London speakers, /ɑ/ in AmE, /ʌ/ in Cockney, Australian and New Zealand,  /a/ in Northern English.


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## Nino83

I've measured some vowel (using the freeware software "praat"). 

greengobbie92 (Australia): 680/1990 (at), 662/1800 (hat)
Mike (New York): 775/2022 + 866/1822 (glide) *[ɛæ]** (at), 806/1799 (hat)
topquark (London): 712/1679 (at), 839/1758 (hi-hat)
Drosophilist (Canada): 751/1573 (hi-hat)
enfield (England, Midlands): 873/1432 (at)

German short /a/ (Stadt):
hermanthegerman (northwest) 734/1428
Bartleby (Hamburg): 668/1543
Thonatas (Frankfurt): 815/1155

Italian /a/:
Lck84 745/1462 (casa)
makingtie 739/1380 (gatto)

You'll find all these pronunciations on forvo.com 

I'd say that the Australian /æ/ is very very similar to [ɛ], the American one is more open but very much fronted, F2 > 1800, London /æ/ has F2 = 1700-1750, it is very fronted, then Canadian /æ/ is in the middle and I perceive it like it is an /a/, Northern English (Midlands included) /æ/ is equal to the Italian /a/ and to the Northern German /a/ (in Hamburg it is more fronted), while it seems that Southern German /a/ is a bit more back. 

Said that, for curiosity, today I also measured my own pronunciation of /æ/ in the words "bat" and "bag", in a file I recorded during this summer (if you're interested, you can search "soundcloud nino some vowel"), and F1/F2 are 813/1571, i.e similar to the Canadian one and more fronted than the Northern English one.
So, it's not impossible for Italians, Germans and other European speakers to have a proper/correct pronunciation of /æ/. 
Obviously it changes from person to person (I think it is probably due to the fact that I play some musical instrument, so I have a good ear).
Anyway, if we exclude the youngest generation, we have to admit that the pronunciation of /æ/ in South East England is still too fronted, and this is the pronunciation we hear every day on BBC and other media, where RP and Eastuary English predominate and where the average age of journalists and anchors is higher than 25. 

If we speak about Northern English and Canadian (maybe also Californian) /æ/, it could be a good choice to start from /a/ (teaching that it should be a little more fronted), but if we speak about American, Australian and Eastuary English, this is not a very good idea. 

*** In http://www.ling.cam.ac.uk/sarah/docs/hawkinsmidgley_jipa05.pdf they say that this long /æ/, *[ɛæ]*, was a feature of Conservative RP (and, like Beaken says, also of Cockney) "*features stereotypically associated with U-RP*, such as fully back /uː/, [ɐː] for /ɜː/, and *[ɛæ] for /æ/*, are now very rare." (pag. 184, pag. 2 of the pdf file) but I hear this long /æ/ also before /p, t, k/ very often in American English.


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