At 3:37 PM -0700 10/20/05, Mark D Lew wrote:
On Oct 20, 2005, at 11:46 AM, John Howell wrote:
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.
Like many matters of English phonetics, whether one pronounces "wh"
distinct from "w" depends on one's regional accent.
I suspect you're quite right on this, Mark, although it isn't a
difference I've ever noticed. I grew up on the West Coast, which
lacked regional dialects to the extent that a good many radio
announcers in my parents' generation were deliberately recruited from
the West Coast specifically because they did not have regional
dialects. My mother coached her choruses to differentiate between
the two sounds, which I have always done with my own singers.
John
mdl
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