I hope you understand my point, the second part of the diphtong sounds like ship with OY (toy, boy, roy) and like book with OU (no, go, boat)

but what about the first vowel? I think in the OU diphthong it sounds like the Spanish O, but the other one, should you open the mouth more, more forward? Or is it exactly the same and only the second half changes.

The dictionay says it's different, but I'm not sure exactly how, would that vowel difference be the vowel in "door" or the vowel in "all" (all being way more open than door for American English, the jaw drops significantly)

The two options I think there are are the American sOrry vowel and the Canadian, dropping less the jaw sOrry as well

I'm not using IPA, willingly but I hope you get it

I was helping a friend with his phonetics exam recently and this came up. I could find no precedent for transcribing it with a diphthong.

As a danish speaker, I hear the [y] very clearly, but that might also explain my bias. It's been a while since I studied linguistics, so [yu] might not be the right transcription, but I would still argue that there is a diphthong in there.

I'm not a native English speaker, but in my ears, [ju:z] without the diphthong sounds incorrect.

A lot of English accents including my own are killing off the /ʊə(r)/ diphthong and replacinɡ it with /oː(r)/ or /ɜː(r)/. Why is this?

Good day,

I have this project on teaching English pronunciation for L2 learners, which proposes that a knowledge or awareness of English phonological history plays a role in ameliorating and supplementing learning strategies and memorisation. Subsequently, it provides the learner with a linguistic awareness of the dynamic and reasonable, non-arbitrary nature of language and that of its pronunciation and the orthographic representation of the pronunciation. Any suggested reads on this topic and general ones on learning theory that supports the proposition that learning and memorisation is more efficient when the learner is provided with 'the causes behind the current system and its intricacies' will be very appreciated.

Every IPA guide that I've seen does this and I can't seem to find an answer for it.

In both British and American English, the long "O" sound is transcribed as /oʊ/– which is all well and good for British English, but is not phonetically accurate for General American English. In American English, the vowel is usually pronounced closer to /ou/. No American I know would pronounce "goat" as /goʊt/, and if they did it would sound rather British.

Is there something I'm missing here?

new, due, two is pronounced as nu, du, tu in dialects with yod-dropping (which I understand has completely taken over the Western US) but I've been hearing some native speakers from California speak and the vowel in new, two and such sound a bit like a diphthong. So what's happening here?

This overview for Dutch (found on the wiki page of the history of the Dutch language) is quite comprehensive and helpful, but I cannot find one for German. Are there any out there? Be it low, central or upper German, any other overview would be helpful

(This turned into a bit of a story time. Bear with me if you're at all interested in a naturally evolving phonological segment.)

Tokétok is not my first conlang, but it is my oldest. It was the only early conlang of mine that survived being culled. By now it is somewhere between 7 and 8 years old and has been around long enough for some of its features to develop naturally. The most intriguing of these is the completely organic development of stød in some words. (For context: stød might be better known as the catch in a Dane's throat that makes them sound like they're speaking with potato in their mouth.)

When I was first coining words for what was then known by the diegetic exonym Kyezun [ˈcji.ʃn̩], I used an apostrophe as a stylistic replacement for /ŋ/ in the /ŋk/ cluster (see: tro'ko /ˈtɾoŋ.ko/ 'tree'). Later I again stylistically used an apostrophe between vowels and final rhotics (see: soka'r [soˈkaːɾ] 'language').

Kyezun did not start with a phonology in mind, only the idea that I didn't want voiced stops and fricatives. After I coined a decent enough lexicon to start figuring out sentence building, I went about canonising the phonology. I found that the only true nasal consonant I had was /m/; /ŋ/ only appeared in that /ŋk/ cluster. And even then, as time progressed, /ŋ/ was being lost in my pronunciation and was replaced by the nasalisation of the vowels it preceded.

With this new realisation of the apostrophe in my romanisation, it was used in newly coined words such as mari'e and até'e. However, now the vowels preceding the apostrophes were now long and potentially nasalised: [maˈɾi(ĩ).ə] 'pretty' and [aˈtɛ(ɛ̃).ə] 'place'.

(After this was about the time Tokétok received it's endonym.)

For the longest time, apostrophes came to only represent the lengthening and/or nasalisation of the preceding vowels. However, after a terribly long hiatus and my learning about developing protolangs for your conlangs, I tried to back-form a protolang from Tokétok to create a sister language for it. It didn't work very well but having come back to my lexicon, I noticed that old words like tro'ko still retained /ŋ/ in my pronunciation after the hiatus, and newer words had the length and/or nasalisation.

Through the process of trying to back-form a protolang, these realisations of an apostrophe in the romanisation became diegetically canonised as an ongoing loss of all lingual/post-labial nasal consonants: conservative speakers would retain

I’m trying to make a sort of evolved version of English and I added a few changes but it’s still very mutually intelligible with English. I’ve already looked at Trigedasleng and like some of the stuff in it but I don’t wanna just copy it directly. So do you guys have any suggestions for sound and grammar changes? Especially for one that had some influence from Spanish and AAVE as well as other prominent immigrant languages. I’m pretty new at conlanging and at the moment I’m not really sure where to start with this

Disclaimer: I am not a linguist. I studied some psycholinguistic during my MA in psychology, but everything I know is based on binge-reading Wikipedia and some open-access paper on google scholar. So basically I know nothing! If this is a silly question or if it needs to be posted somewhere else, I apologize!

I am not a native English speaker, I am Italian, but I've been living in Toronto for a while now. These two diphthongs have been driving me crazy. They are reported as /eɪ̯/ and /oʊ/, but I would like to know what their actual pronunciation is!

/eɪ̯/ --> To me, words like play, say, or day don't rhyme with words like OK or gay. The former, I hear as [eɪ̯] whereas the latter as something more towards [ɛɪ̯], although not as "open". For instance, to me, play is close to the Italian word déi [ˈd̪ei̯] (some), while OK is close to the Italian word "Dèi" [ˈd̪ɛi̯] (gods).

/oʊ/ --> As for the other diphthong, I hear it pronounced differently in different words. For instance, in no or window I hear [oʊ], but in words like don't, I do not hear [ doʊnt] but a sound more towards [ɔ], something like [do̞ʊnt] or even [do̞nt] with no diphthong.

As I said, English is not my native language and I might be hearing these words with a "biased" and untrained ear. However, [e], [ɛ], [o], and [ɔ] are all existing sounds in the Italian vowel inventory, so I should be able to tell them apart.

Just in dialects American English I hear regularly: /aɪ/, /aʊ/, /eɪ/, /i/ (realized as [ɪi] in some contexts), /oʊ/, /ɔɪ/, /u/ (realized as [ʊu] in some contexts), /æ/ ([eə] with /æ/-tensing), /ɔ/ ([ɔə~oə] for some speakers).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Phonetic_Alphabet_chart_for_English_dialects

Looking at this chart it seems like almost every English phonemic monophthong is realized as a diphthong in some dialect, as well as many phonemic diphthongs that were historically monophothongs.

It seems like most other languages I've looked into tend to have more monophthongs. Is this a uniquely English feature or are there other languages with similarly many diphthongs?

In various studies and handbooks, they show the formants' values of English vowels, but it seems not to be the case for the English diphthongs. In fact, I have only managed to find one resource; not quite as detailed at that. Hence, I come here for help...maybe some of you have come across the formant values for diphthongs (I am interested in the fronting diphthongs: /eɪ/, /aɪ/ and /ɔɪ/)? Or perhaps there some underlying reasons as to why these are not as well documented?

All responses greatly appreciated!

What phonological process explains approximant (ɹ, l, w, j/) devoicing in English when preceded in the same syllable by a voiceless stop? Is the approximant assimilated to the preceding voiceless stop? If so why doesn't that same thing happen to a vowel following a voiceless stop; or put another way, what is special about approximants in this environment?

How common is this cross-linguistically?

Any help appreciated.

Wikipedia has nice comprehensive overviews for all sound changes in the history of e.g. English, French and Portuguese. Is there such an overview for the Sound changes leading to modern German?

I'm already aware of Wikipedia's Phonological history of English, but that list isn't as exhaustive as I'd like. For example that list doesn't mention the Cork-Quark merger

I was wondering if anyone was aware of more extensive resources on the topic that they could point me toward.

I'm most interested in changes that took place from Middle English onward.

Well, guys, it happened again.

So last time I said that I wrote a big post about Angws morphology and its historical origin, but then realised that it would be too long of a post, so I split it up. This time, I wrote the history, and then, looking down over it, realised that nobody in their right mind would see the text cursor shrink into nothingness and still bother to read the post. So I pasted the last half the post into a draft which I'll post tomorrow or the day after that.

This post covers Proto-Anguÿa (along with a few notes on Pre-Anguÿa), conditioning of consonants, the origin of consonant weakening, and lastly the development of anticipatory vowel harmony. Tomorrow, I'll cover the merging of enclitics with their hosts, vowel reduction, consonant hardening, rhinoglottophilia and lastly the various issues I discovered while writing out these posts.

Links to previous post:

Introduction to Angw and its aspectual morphology:

https://www.reddit.com/r/conlangs/comments/dk6emh/an_introduction_to_the_angw_with_particular_focus/

Old and outdated post about the history of the language, in case you want to see how far the language has come since then:

https://www.reddit.com/r/conlangs/comments/aavd5b/sound_changes_from_protohayahaya_to_modern_angw/

Proto-Anguÿa

Vowels:

Phonotactical rules:

/ʡ/ becomes [ħ] intervocally and word finally

/ʔ/ is phonetically a glottal stop, but behaves like a glottalized pharyngeal approximant /ʕˀ/.

/t͡s/ and /s/ were retracted /t͡s̠ / and /s̠ /, somewhere between /t͡s/ and /s/ and /t͡ʃ/ and /ʃ/.

CV(C) structure, /h/ was permitted syllable-finally in certain context within word-borders, while

Hello all!

I'm from western Montana. While my accent generally goes uncommented upon in interstate settings, inevitably something peculiar comes up, and it becomes a topic of conversation. More obviously, I show some signs of so-called Canadian vowel raising, as well as what I'd call a "rounding out" of what would usually be realized as /oʊ/. I suppose it's less fronted than most. None of these are particularly notable, and are well-attested, at least in form. These attributes aren't universal to Montana, but they do appear in various strengths depending on location, and are certainly not uncommon.

A few aspects of my accent, however, I've never seen written about anywhere. Occasionally I'll see reference to something similar, but always with a few major differences. In many cases, the supposed dialectical feature mentioned seems to be the opposite of what I (and others around me) do, in terms of which sounds assimilate to what, or under what circumstances certain changes happen.

For example, when people from elsewhere hear me say, "vague" or "plague", they immediately pick up on the fact that I don't say /veɪg/. Instead, I pronounce the word with a monophthong. I've always been curious about this, because no one back home has ever commented on it, but it seems to be very easily noticed by others. In fact, after paying attention to those from my home-state, they pronounce that word (and similar words) just as I do, but in a way that's apparently distinct to people from more eastern areas. After digging, and finding lots of anecdotal remarks online, I finally found a paper published by the University of Washington that stated that some speakers in the Pacific Northwest (the scope of the study did not include my home state) were said to exhibit a merger of /eg/ and /eɪg/ with /ɛg/, in which /e/ lowered, /ɛ/ raised, and /eɪ/ monophthongized, meaning that words like "vague, egg", and "keg" rhyme, more along the lines of /ɛg/. I'm vastly simplifying for my point, here, and the paper goes into various other aspects such as distinction between age and gender, but the gist is this merger.

While the above is the closest description I have found to what I (and, anecdotally, others from my area) exhibit, and in fact how people from outside my home area describe what I exhibit ("You said 'vɛg'."), my pronunciation is very much *sepa

I've seen cases such as capillum > cheveu, where the /a/ developed into a schwa, but there are other cases such as palatium > palais where the first /a/ resists such a change. Is there some sort of pattern to this development or is it random? They're both unstressed and in open syllables, so does it have something to do with the surrounding phonemes? Plosive vs fricative, for example?

If I'm not mistaken the be- and ge- prefixes in Old English are unstressed and can be transcribed as [be] and [je] respectively. What phonological processes occurred, especially in regard to be-, from the Old English period into the Modern English period?

Both be- and ge- are open syllables correct? If so, shouldn't [be] > [be:] through Middle English open syllable lengthening? And then through the great vowel shift [be:] > [bi:]? At what point did this unstressed vowel shorten again and change into the spoken [bɪ], [bi] or [bə]? Or am I completely missing something here?

I'm currently looking through the Varieties of English series from De Gruyter and finding it really helpful in learning about the phonologies of different English dialects. I love how detailed the descriptions are, and that they cover specific regions and variations within larger dialects. These books seem to mostly focus on L1 varieties of English, though they also cover some L2 varieties in countries with many English speakers.

I'm looking for similar resources that describe the phonologies of L2 English varieties in this level of detail. In terms of books, I've only seen a few targeted at ESL teachers that don't go very much in depth. I do see the value of simply learning about another language's phonology and comparing that to English, and then guessing about the L1 interference that might occur in English, but I'd like to find something more concrete and research-based.

Any suggestions?

Hi all,

Does anyone know interesting phonological (morphonological or even phonetic) phenomena in English? I've looked at vowel reduction more closely, and am interested in other phenomena in English (trying to brainstorm a bit for a potential phd topic and there are so many things I like that some input would be awesome)! Thanks :)

I personally remember my mind being blown when I found out that /aɪ/ was two sounds smashed together (mostly because there's no /a/ sound in my speech). Is this true for most American english speakers the same way /eɪ/ is seen as a single vowel?

Hey so I have a question. Obviously there is an ongoing joke in the states about Chinese speakers switching l for r (ie herro, engrish etc). It is mean to make fun of someone for their accent. I'm not trying to do that, but I'm DYING to know what phonological motivations lead to this alteration?

I mean I looked up the phonology of Cantonese and.....there is no rhotic! Only the lateral! Mandarin has the retroflex rhotic, similar to english, but only in very specific environments, and only in certain parts of the country (notably, beijing).

So either this phonological process is mislabled to the chinese and actually belongs to speakers of a different asian language (in which case I feel like a total idiot and ignorant), or I'm missing something major here.

Can anyone shed light on to this? I mean obviously the rhotic and lateral release share a lot, and are often involved in the same phonological processes, which is what made me think about this phenomona to begin with.

Thanks for the help! Also I apologize if I said something incorrect; I'm only a first year in my first degree!

I teach philosophy. My students (or the ones who don't read anyway) consistently make the mistake of referring to John Stuart Mill as "Mills" or "John Stuart Mills". My first thought was that they hear me referring to "Mill's theory" all the time and simply mistake the possessive for his name. But then they don't mistake Immanuel Kant or David Hume as "Kants" or "Humes".

It occurred to me that lots of names that end in "l" get an "s" after them like "Wells", "Rawls", etc. (Though names that end in "el" don't, like "Sandel" or "Cartwell".) Anything to that theory? Thanks!

This may be more in the realm of history of linguistics than linguistics itself, but my motivation for asking this lies within the bounds of linguistics proper. There are a ton of theories of phonology out there, as well as broader "paradigms" into which those theories fall. As a linguistics student, I sometimes find it hard to keep straight not just the formal differences between the theories, but all the different underlying philosophical and methodological differences which motivate the existence of so many competing theories to begin with. I feel like the best way to fix this is to get a thorough grounding in the historical development of these ideas. Whether that be in the form of a literal historical account, or just a bibliography of the works that most strongly influenced the various large-scale schools of thought (let's say since 1900). If anyone knows of any resources that might fit this bill, or has any other reading recommendations that might be helpful, I would love to hear them!

I know it's really similar to a recent question, I swear I wrote it down some days ago to remember to ask it after the exam I had this morning.

Edit. Of your language or accent

I.e., are there any significant syntactic or morphological differences? Obviously dialects differ within the respective groupings as well so feel free to comment on that as well but I was wondering if there are general trends on either side of the pond.

EG clicks in Khoisian languages exclusive to Southeastern Africa or the languages of West Africa which require speakers to simultaneously produce consonant sounds with their lips and soft palate as compared to Indo-European languages which, while they do have their own quirks and difficulties seem overall simpler. And the further you get from our original homeland the simpler the phonology of languages seem to get such as the Japanese and Austronesian families which don't feature consonant clusters like Indo-European languages. Is there anything there or is my read on it total BS?

Haven't had any luck searching myself hitherto. I am sure this is asked often, but I couldn't find anything, I apologise.

Anything written on the topic which I, probably poorly, described in the title; anything in French, English, Spanish, or Italian would be fantastic. Thank you in advance!

Do diphthongs adopt all the features of their components? For example, ɔɪ consists of ɔ (sonorant, continuant, approximant, voice, round, back, syllabic) and ɪ (sonorant, continuant, approximant, voice, high, front, syllabic). So is ɔɪ all of those (sonorant, continuant, approximant, voice, round, high, back, front, syllabic)?

And if this is the case, how are the features of diphthongs determined from their component phonemes?

Alright, continuing off from where we got to yesterday.

Aspectual Merger and other fun stuff, or: REMOVE CONSONANT!

So up until this point, the aspectual enclitics were just that; clitics. At this point in time, however, they fully merge with the verb stem. The process is... weird. But it works like this:

The results are not quite predictable, but all initial consonants are dropped, except for the ejectives which simplify to glottal stops /ʔ/. (With nouns, I imagine, initial consonants of the merged clitics remained)

1 =tiʔ -> (V)-i

2 =ˌal -> ˌɑl

3 =hujat͡s -> (V+, C-)-ɯjæt͡s

4 =suɰḁ -> (V+)-ɯɰ

5 =ˌhaj -> (C-)-ˌæj

6 =xis -> (V)-is

7 =k’un -> (V+)-ʔɯn

8 =ˌɬaq -> -ˌɑq

9 =q’iʕax -> -ʔiʁ̝ax

Note that following /h/, the ejectives consonants in 7 and 9 maintain their original pronounciation /kʷ'/ and /q'/, while /h/ drops out.

Note that the glottal stop is best treated as an neutralization allophone for /k'/, /kʷ'/, /q'/ and /qʷ'/ following other consonants in a stressed syllable (so /ˌkat-q'a/ -> /ˌkat-ʔa/.

This is part of a general tendency at this point in time towards clitics merging with their host. With the noun in particular becoming much more agglutinating than previously. I imagine that the merger happened sometime around the same time as the vowel reduction in the next chapter, and that together they helped push the language towards a more lenient syllable structure.

Vowel Reduction, or: REMV CNSNANT!

Alright, so now we have accounted for how most of the phoneme inventory came to be, as well as how most of the stem alterations got started: Consonant weakening came about as a mutation caused by a clitic-initial /h/. While the neutral vowel and vowel hardening processes came about as a result of ablaut obscuring the original root vowel. We're stilling missing two major elements: Vowel reduction (and the accompanying vowel weakening stem alteration) and consonant hardening, I'll get to the consonant hardening in a while, first, let's start with vowel reduction:

Historical vowel reduction in Angw is fairly straight-forward on paper, but becomes quite complicated when combined with agglutination and the anticipatory vowel ablaut:

First of all, this is the point where the modern Angw syllable structure fully emerges: (C)V(C), where V may be any vowel or syllabic sonorant.

Starting from the right of any word and going left, delete any unstressed vowel that does not result in an illegal syllable accord