At 1:12 PM -0400 10/20/05, Phil Daley wrote:
At 10/20/2005 12:40 PM, John Howell wrote:
The two words allow us greater precision in writing
although the difference might not always be audible in speech.
Oh, I think it would.
If you called someone a "loser" or a "looser", wouldn't there be an
audible speech difference?
Yes, but interestingly enough not in the vowel, which is the same
phoneme even though it is written differently, but in the consonants.
"Loo-zer" and "Loo-ser." But in conversational speech such details
are often passed over, just as unstressed vowels (in English) tend
all to become schwas. There are many more varieties of dialectical
American English than just broadcast standard. There was a
discussion a while ago about the difference between, e.g., "woe" and
"whoa," with me arguing that the latter requires a labial fricative
sound before the first voiced sound and someone (Andrew?) arguing
that that is no longer the case.
John
--
John & Susie Howell
Virginia Tech Department of Music
Blacksburg, Virginia, U.S.A 24061-0240
Vox (540) 231-8411 Fax (540) 231-5034
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http://www.music.vt.edu/faculty/howell/howell.html
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