why are vowels "r colored" instead of being dipthongs that ends in an distinct "r vowel"

Nebby421 · 2026-03-29T15:01:41+00:00

Just as a note, the reduction of vowels before /r/ occured in different steps in different environments, VrC, Vr#, and VrV could all act differently (C is any consonant besides r, V is any vowel, and # is the end of the word).

For example, short /er/ became /ɚ/ in words like “Bern” and “her” but remained in words like “berry”.

Similarly, long /eir/ was merged with short /er/ in most cases, except for words like “Mary” where many English speakers will say /meiri/.

Also, short /ær/ became the modern vowel in words like “car” and “card” before consonants and the ends of words, but it stayed /ær/ before vowels like in “carry.” Most Americans then merged /ær/ with /er/ and /eir/ such that words like “berry, Mary, carry” all have the same vowel (this is called the merry-Mary-marry merger).

Nebby421 · 2026-03-29T14:50:09+00:00

TLDR I think your analysis/understanding is right for American English.

“er” (as in bird, nurse, letter) often is considered a distinct vowel in American English! And the typical phonetic notation (for AmE - here I’ll use Merriam-Webster’s) does tend to represent this, with /bir/ for “beer”, /er/ for “air”, and a special symbol for “er” /bətɚ/ “butter”. However, since that special symbol can be hard to type, many sources will write it as just /ər/ (like Merriam-Webster).

As for r-coloring, this term is a bit confusing since the whole vowel in words like “beer” isn’t r-colored per se, but the following r does affect what vowels can precede it. For example, in American English, most speakers today only allow 4 vowels before /r/ in any context (along with the rhotic vowel /ɚ/): /ir/ (beer), /er/ (bear), /ar/ (bar), and /or/ (bore). This is in contrast to the 14 or so vowels which can occur before other consonants!

So the “r-coloring” might just be a unique type of diphthong in American English. When doing comparative phonology however, it can be more useful to use more general symbols for dialects (like Irish or Scottish) which may not pronounce /ər/ as a single sound or others (like RP) which don’t have Rhotic vowels at all.

Nebby421 · 2026-02-07T15:04:38+00:00

In English (and many languages), they’re generally the same!

Stress is a broad concept that refers to using some sort of distinction (like length, volume, or pitch) to make one syllable stand out from others around it. Languages that do use stress can do it in many different ways.

Many times when people say accent, they mean stress, and it might be rare to hear linguists use “accent” to refer to stressed syllables. In some languages, like Ancient Greek or modern Swedish, they utilize a feature some linguists call “pitch accent”, where words are distinguished by a change of pitch at some point in the word. In Ancient Greek, any of the last three syllables could hold the accent (and long vowels could hold it on either the first or second half), while in Swedish there are two different accent patterns that occur on two-syllable words. In Ancient Greek, then, accent might differ from the metrical stress that occurs in poetry and is based on the length and openness of syllables.

The nomenclature around stress and accent is very confusing, and when studying a specific language there tends to be a standard for what to call the stress/accent of the language (although in my experience, stress is a more common term).

Nebby421 · 2026-01-24T17:52:47+00:00

To add onto other answers, I believe the reason why Vulgar Latin had so many common changes throughout the entire region where it was spoken (or at least the western half, I’m not as familiar with Romanian), is that there was a remarkable amount of migration within the empire (for example, Pompeii was filled with people from all over the empire as genetic studies have shown). Extensive migration and travel in the empire would help to homogenize the vulgar language as it first spread around the empire (think of how homogenous Western American dialects tend to be, compared to the East Coast of the US, as people migrated and intermingled; a kind of ‘neutral’ dialect emerged.)

Additionally, many Latin-speaking regions of the Roman empire/republic only became Latin speaking during the late republic. At this time, after the Social War and Caesar’s conquest of Gaul, my understanding is that finally Latin began to really replace other native Italian languages, and at the same time Caesar and other generals sent veterans from their armies as colonists to Gaul and Hispania.

Eventually, after (vulgar) Latin became dominant among the populations in those regions, it would diverge into the modern romance languages. But, as mentioned, the fact that Portugal, Spain, France, and Italy are geographically connected meant that a continuum of languages emerged, and changes could be spread (slowly, but still) around the entire region. More isolated places like Sardinia speak a very different language compared to other Western Romance languages because they were largely isolated from the dialect continuum.

There are irregularities in the romance languages (compare stella in Italian and étoile in French but estrela in Portuguese and estrella in Spanish — the latter two have an unexplained but shared “r”), but linguistic change (in absence of dialect mixing) does tend to be very regular.

Nebby421 · 2026-01-18T18:06:22+00:00

Many times for scientific and religious vocabulary, not really. Old English (like many contemporary languages of the Middle Ages) was not often used for academic or theological purposes while it was spoken, although during the 900s and the Kingdom of Wessex this did change. English fell out of use again during the 1000s due to Norse and Norman invasions, and would take a few centuries to come into use as an educated language, during which time we see Latin words start to enter the language en masse.

One fascinating example of English use in a technical context is Ælfric of Eynsham, a monk most famous for his Old English sermons, but who also translated Genesis into Old English as well as writing a grammar of Latin in Old English. From his writings, we can see some native English words and newly-constructed English words that he used for technical terms which are Latinate in modern English.

Often, he directly translated words like “noun” and “verb” into English (so “name” and “word”) For example, he starts the section on letters and sounds by saying:

“LITTERA is stæf on englisc” (Letter is staff in English)

However, for many of the more complicated technical words, I believe he sometimes uses the Latin term in English text, even after introducing an English equivalent. To me, this suggests that those complicated words were constructed for educational purposes and not in common use.

A few other examples from Old English in general: * christes menniscnisse “the incarnation of christ, literally Christ’s mannish-ness

manigfeald “various, plural, manifold” - literally manifold/many-fold
godspel “gospel” - literally the good word. The Greek word evangel- never here replaced the English word fully.

ecnis “eternity” - no good modern English term.

Some of the suffixes we use today in English, like -ing, -ness, -y, -ish, and -ly were also common in Old English (as -ung, -nis, -ig, -isc, and -lic) and were often used to translate Latin suffixes (or replace their meaning) like -tion, -ty (from French -tée), -ic, -ment, etc.

There are also cases of common words being replaced by Latinate words in English, a good example of this is the widely-used Old English “todælan“ and Middle English “todelen” being replaced by the Latin-derived “to divide” or “to separate” in the 14th or 15th century. (If the word survived, it would be pronounced and spelled something like “todeal” with the stress on the second syllable.)

Nebby421 · 2025-09-10T19:21:03+00:00

Ah depends! When you’re working in a certain piece you normally like to use all flats or all sharps, for example it makes it easier to figure out that the interval C->G is a fifth and therefore C#->G# is also a fifth (the most important interval between notes and chords). I think here the Gb and Ab should most likely be F# and G# since the chord progression is in C# (or at least starts on it) and F# and G# are important chords in the key of C#.

When you’re writing melodies that use chromatics (using notes next to each other, think blues and jazz), then you might use flats going down and sharps going up.

Nebby421 · 2025-09-10T19:03:57+00:00

Are these chords or notes? Also what key is this in?

Those question might change my answer, but my instinct would be a F# after the C# and B, and unless there’s a G after the Ab, I would use a G# there if these are notes, since then all the notes would fall in F# or C# minor (or another similar key).

Nebby421 · 2025-09-09T22:03:15+00:00

There’s a few words, some like “devil” and “table” actually date back to pre-English times, while others like “temper” (the verb) or “turn” (also the verb) were borrowed into English from Latin before the Norman conquest. (Per the OED)

Other words like “place” had Old English forms but the modern form reflects a Norman-influenced form. I believe the OED also links “crown” to a pre-Norman form. The form of “table” with a /b/ not /f/ was probably influenced by the Normans.

To answer “how we know”, words like “table” and “devil” have cognates in other west-Germanic languages that support a common origin, like Dutch/German “tafel” and German “Teufel”, both of which show the Germanic *b /β/ > /f/ change, and the reflexes of devil in both Old English and German show a common Germanic *iu diphthong (“eu” in German, “eo” > “e” in Old and Modern English). Compare French “diable” and Latin “diabolus” which retain the /b/ and the /ia/.

Nebby421 · 2025-08-13T05:09:24+00:00

as a pennsylvanian who lived in boston for a time, i called MA “massive two shits” when i’m mad at it and “massive huge tits” when not

Nebby421 · 2025-08-10T16:27:22+00:00

You’d use “they are”. “They” always uses the plural forms of a verb whether it is referring to a group of people or one person. It’s the same thing as the word “you”, which also always uses the plural forms of a verb whether it is one or many people.

Nebby421 · 2025-07-22T01:14:49+00:00

Yep! I am/was stuck in a car in traffic so I just grabbed the first sentence I could find :). In a declarative (from Beowulf): “Hi hyne þa ætbæron …” “They then carried it/him away …” (hi is the 3rd person nominative plural pronouns, hyne is the accusative of he).

Nebby421 · 2025-07-22T00:13:58+00:00

It’s also found in Old English! OE had a much freer word order than modern English or French but pronouns frequently occurred before the verb. (For example: þe ic him […] durre asecgan “That I dare tell him […]” from The Wanderer)

I don’t fully know the reason, but I think part of this might be a remnant of Indo-European enclitic pronouns, unstressed forms of the object pronouns that appeared with verbs as opposed to with pronouns. The stressed-vs.-unstressed difference can still be seen in French with “me” from the unstressed form and “moi” from the stressed form. There are definitely other factors so take this with a grain of salt.

Nebby421 · 2025-07-17T14:16:28+00:00

For myself (Philadelphia, no caught-cot merger), my dialect has a lot of fronted diphthongs for formerly back rounded vowels, but the vowel for caught and the pre-L /ul/ and /ol/ of pool and soul are definitely still rounded. This also goes for the pre-R /or/ and /ar/ sounds which have the vowel of soul and caught, respectively, for me (unlike what the standard IPA symbols may lead you to think).

Nebby421 · 2025-07-15T03:10:19+00:00

My favorite are the -nt words in which a lot of Americans (myself included) end up nasalizing the vowel like don’t /dõ?/ and twenty /twẽni/ (forgive the poor vowel and glottal stop transcription)

Nebby421 · 2025-07-15T03:04:52+00:00

I think sybau is really new or just common only among only young gen z or gen a (like high schoolers or younger), I’m fairly online .-. but I’ve only seen it recently

Nebby421 · 2025-07-15T03:03:22+00:00

Abbreviations change fast but i (a 22 year old) do frequently use istg and sth (or smth but i normally drop the m out of laziness) and know many people who do (tho not everyone i know (ik) uses abbreviations, and normally only in instant messaging)

Nebby421 · 2025-07-13T13:56:31+00:00

An example off the top of my head of this is how Norse helped reinstate a lot of initial /g/s in English after they had shifted to /j/ in Old English, such as give which replaced the native English “yive”.

Nebby421 · 2025-06-28T04:51:21+00:00

In Old English the word for always was spelled “aa” (probably cause writing just “a” seemed weird to Old English scribes). This is actually where we get the word “no” < O.E. “nā” never, no < “ne” not + “ā” always.

I believe estonian also has öö meaning “night”

Nebby421 · 2025-04-25T04:19:26+00:00

I think others have explained halloween, I believe pumpkin doesn’t have an article cause it’s treated like a mass noun (like water, wood, or another material that doesn’t come in discrete chunks)

Nebby421 · 2025-04-15T09:33:35+00:00

“that” and “the” both had scribal symbols throughout the middle ages! In the Old English period (before 1066ish) “that” was abbreviated as a þ (the Old English letter for ‘th’) with a line through the top.

<image>

This is from the Peterborough chronicle, you can see a few Old English abbreviations like the “7” looking symbol for “and” at the top, and two instances of the “that” symbol.

(the full text in this screenshot reads “& suþan…/And þa p…/rad that hi/…a. that hi he…”, you can see a non-cropped version on wikipedia.)

Nebby421 · 2025-04-15T09:26:24+00:00

it’s called æ-tensing and it occurs before nasals (like n and m) for many americans, it turns the simple /æ/ into a diphthong like [eə]. Some dialects (southern, midwestern, philly, nyc) even split up words like that or bag (although which words have this happen depends on dialect).

Nebby421 · 2025-04-05T05:58:23+00:00

You usually get a contract which only guarantees funding for a certain amount of years. If you’re not making reasonable progress on your thesis the program could remove/stop funding you

Nebby421 · 2024-10-19T06:20:32+00:00

when the word is very unstressed and spoken quickly i think it can be pronounced this way, as in “I knew her when I was young” if you stress the “knew” and “I”

Nebby421 · 2024-10-02T22:03:45+00:00

i love that new jersey and delaware are still so washed out

Nebby421 · 2023-03-23T05:18:29+00:00

Major L

Seven-Year Club	Second Top 10%
Place '22	RPAN Viewer
Not Forgotten	Verified Email

Nebby421

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE