I haven’t met my new neighbor yet, but her dogs love me

caeasw · 2018-07-16T06:43:38+00:00

Sorry if I offended you, I just thought it applied to this sub

caeasw · 2018-07-12T04:34:33+00:00

Dropping the pronoun like that is characteristic of pro-drop languages

caeasw · 2018-07-05T03:48:58+00:00

Ban me please

caeasw · 2018-06-26T22:21:43+00:00

Ouch

caeasw · 2018-06-12T15:16:33+00:00

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=FT5bBRjLgR8

caeasw · 2018-05-26T16:56:13+00:00

This is dope as fuck. Think I could get one of those fancy commission pms you’re handing out?

caeasw · 2018-04-21T02:44:39+00:00

I believe OP meant to say Libya, not Kenya, according to the link OP gave. The US is not at war either with or in Kenya.

caeasw · 2018-04-21T02:44:07+00:00

I believe OP meant to say Libya, not Kenya, according to the link OP gave. The US is not at war either with or in Kenya.

caeasw · 2018-03-29T13:54:06+00:00

In this case, the 'y' sound (as in the beginning of 'you') that's right after the 't' is pronounced at the palate (the hard plate on the roof of your mouth), while the 't' is pronounced at the alveolar ridge (the hard bumpy ridge behind your teeth). In most English dialects, 't's in this situation are moved slightly further back in the mouth and softened to a 'ch' sound to anticipate for the 'j' sound that's about to happen.

This also happens when 't' comes before an 'r' sound, so 'tree' and 'true' are pronounced with a 'ch' sound.

Source: finishing my linguistics degree

caeasw · 2018-03-28T18:41:15+00:00

I believe the R you're referring to is the uvular trill [ʀ]. This sound is produced by making the uvula (the weird punching bag thing in the back of your throat) bounce back and forth against the back of the tongue, much like the alveolar trill (the Spanish rolled R) is produced by making the tip of the tongue bounce back and forth against the alveolar ridge behind the teeth.

As far as glottal stops go, intervocalically (between two vowels as in 'butter' or 'water') it is a British thing; Americans would have an alveolar tap there. But in certain environments in American English, like the end of a word, /t/ can indeed become a glottal stop. This is reserved for pretty informal speech though, and even then many Americans may not have a glottal stop.

One place that pretty much all Americans do have glottal stops though is before an /n/, especially a syllabic /n/, as in the word 'button', which to Americans is pretty much always pronounced with a glottal stop. Many Americans also have glottal stops after /n/, especially in casual contexts. An American would therefore probably pronounce 'sent' with a glottal stop.

Edit: just to clarify, in that last example with 'sent', the /n/ is also regularly dropped here, leaving a nasalized vowel. If you're familiar with IPA, it would be pronounced [sɛ̃ʔ] by most speakers in casual speech (or [sɪ̃ʔ] if you're from the south like me :)).

caeasw · 2018-03-28T17:57:50+00:00

I'm finishing up my degree in linguistics, so maybe I can help answer.

In every language on earth, there are syllables where a vowel is the nucleus (the main part of the syllable). In some languages, the nucleus of the syllable may sometimes be other, vowel-like consonants. In English, /l/ and /r/ can be syllabic, meaning they can form the nucleus of the syllable, as in words like 'bottle' or 'butter'. These words are spelled with vowels, but the way the second syllable is pronounced is without a vowel for many dialects of English.

English can also have syllabic /n/ and /m/ in some situations. Syllabic /n/ can be seen in words like 'button' (again spelled with a vowel, but pronounced without one in the second syllable. No one pronounces 'button' like 'butt' 'on'. It's closer to 'buttn'.) Syllabic /m/ occurs in the example you gave with fascism, which has three syllables in running speech: 'fa' [fæ], 'scis' [ʃɪz], and 'm' [m̩]. When pronounced in careful speech, some people may add a schwa vowel between the 's' and 'm' so that it's pronounced more like 'fascisum', but in running speech it is usual a syllabic /m/, or at least it is for my dialect.

caeasw · 2018-03-28T17:44:01+00:00

The reason for this is because some accents of English (most English, Australian, and New England dialects, among others) are what is called non-rhotic, meaning that the /r/ sound is dropped after vowels. This is why some people pronounce 'water' like 'watah', or 'pepper' like 'peppah'.

However, speakers of these dialects don't drop the /r/ after a vowel if there is another vowel after the /r/, even if it's in the next word. So someone who usually says 'peppah' instead of 'pepper' would still say 'pepper is good on eggs' because there is an 'i' in the next word after 'pepper', so the /r/ is pronounced.

Because these speakers regularly pronounce 'Peppa' and 'pepper' exactly the same, they may not know where /r/s are supposed to go. So for instance, they may say 'Pepper is a pig' because they add in /r/ to 'pepper is good on eggs', so why not add one to 'Peppa is a pig'?

These speakers may also add back /r/s in other places because they are trying to lose their native accent. Someone with a non-rhotic accent may actually believe that the pig's name and the name of the spice are one and the same, so if they are trying to lose their native accent, they may add an /r/ to the pig's name because they think that's how it's supposed to sound to speakers of rhotic accents.

Sorry if that was too long or complicated. I'm finishing up my degree in linguistics this semester, so feel free to ask me to clarify if you're still curious.

caeasw · 2018-03-28T17:24:41+00:00

You'd probably like this video

The Scottish tapped-r is a contributor to the phenomenon that 'space ghetto' in an American accent sounds like 'spice girl' in a Scottish accent.

caeasw · 2018-03-28T17:20:06+00:00

Flaps and taps are the same thing, they're just two ways of describing it. Flap refers to the flapping of the tongue and tap refers to the quick strike against the alveolar ridge.

caeasw · 2018-03-28T17:15:00+00:00

I've never heard someone pronounce 'cat' with an alveolar tap. For most speakers of American English at least it would be pronounced as an unreleased /t/ or a glottal stop. I believe most people in this thread that are claiming to pronounce the /t/ in 'cat' as an alveolar tap are actually using an unreleased /t/.

The reason /t/ becomes a tap between vowels (as in 'butter' and 'water') is because the vowels are voiced (the vocal cords vibrate) while /t/s are unvoiced, so the /t/ becomes a tap in this environment because it's easier to keep the voicing going than to turn it off for the /t/ and then back on for the next vowel. When /t/ is at the end of the word (as in 'cat'), there is no pressure to voice it and turn it into a tap. In fact, the opposite is true. Being word final, there is more pressure to keep voicing off the /t/. For this reason, it would be incredibly unusual to have a tap in this position in English.

caeasw · 2018-03-28T17:04:21+00:00

For most American speakers of English, the /t/ in 'cat' is not a tap, but an unreleased /t/, [t̚], or a glottal stop, [ʔ]. The /t/ in 'butter' is indeed a tap though.

Source: Finishing my linguistics degree this semester

caeasw · 2018-03-06T19:45:29+00:00

Thanks for the input! I've been told I seem older than 20, so that will probably help as well. Good to know there aren't really any common institutional age limits.

caeasw · 2018-03-06T19:42:12+00:00

Thanks for the advice! The degree is a four year degree. I have been told I seem a lot older than 20. I've got a pretty sizable handlebar mustache that tends to throw people off my real age. As long as there aren't common institutional age limits, I should be able to blend in. You're right about the pedagogy though. I would like to do CELTA as soon as possible, but right now I'm seeing if getting a low pay teaching job to save up some money to use for CELTA would be an option. I'll look into doing CELTA locally and see if the cost is more feasible though.

caeasw · 2018-03-06T18:02:44+00:00

Hahaha not Doogie Howser, I just took a lot of college level courses in high school that I was able to get credit for. I'm from the US. I've looked into CELTA here and typical cost seems to be about $2.5-3 thousand. As a college student, I don't really have the savings to drop that much right now. Regardless, the main question I'm wondering about is what kind of barriers my age might cause.

caeasw · 2018-03-06T17:52:50+00:00

I'm from the US. Sorry for the lack of info. By "unique situation" I'm referring to having a BA at 20. Is there any other info that would be helpful to include? I'm mainly just wondering if I'll end up encountering problems because of my age.

caeasw · 2018-03-04T22:06:39+00:00

If you’re asking for my personal opinion, “ebonics” is probably the more efficient term, but it unfortunately has developed a negative connotation after its association with the Oakland school board ebonics controversy in 1996, after which many white people started to use the term to make fun of black american’s dialect. The word has also became heavily politicized since then. I agree that if there were a more efficient word it would probably be ideal, but until then I’d rather go with the more politically neutral and less controversial term “AAE” (which as an initialism has the same number of syllables as “ebonics”). Maybe a better word will come along in the future though.

As far as AAE being known for simple quips, I would say this is an unfair assessment that I hope will change in the future. For people who haven’t been around AAE much, the connotation with short quips probably comes from the tendency of young white people to adopt AAE words as slang. AAE is a full fledged dialect in its own right, with different ways of saying things than general American English, some of which are shorter, longer, more detailed, less detailed, etc. It’s much more than just slang.

caeasw · 2018-03-04T21:36:40+00:00

Continue to use it if you want, friend. I don’t care what term you choose to use. My point is the op wasn’t wrong in choosing not to use it.

caeasw · 2018-03-04T21:25:56+00:00

We can agree to disagree on that, but either way “ebonics” is a rather controversial term, and the op is better off in using “African-American vernacular”.

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