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Pronunciation Of English ⟨a⟩
There are a variety of pronunciations in Modern English and in historical forms of the language for words spelled with the letter . Most of these go back to the low vowel (the "short A") of earlier Middle English, which later developed both long and short forms. The sound of the long vowel was altered in the Great Vowel Shift, but later a new long A (or "broad A") developed which was not subject to the shift. These processes have produced the main four pronunciations of in present-day English: those found in the words ''trap'', ''face'', ''father'' and ''square'' (with the phonetic output depending on whether the dialect is rhotic or not, and, in rhotic dialects, whether or not the Mary–merry merger occurs). Separate developments have produced additional pronunciations in words like ''wash'', ''talk'' and ''comma''. Overview Late Middle English had two phonemes and , differing only in length. The ("short A") was found in words such as ''cat'' and ''trap'' , and also ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
English Phonology
English phonology is the system of speech sounds used in spoken English. Like many other languages, English has wide variation in pronunciation, both historically and from dialect to dialect. In general, however, the regional dialects of English share a largely similar (but not identical) phonological system. Among other things, most dialects have vowel reduction in unstressed syllables and a complex set of phonological features that distinguish fortis and lenis consonants ( stops, affricates, and fricatives). Phonological analysis of English often concentrates on prestige or standard accents, such as Received Pronunciation for England, General American for the United States, and General Australian for Australia. Nevertheless, many other dialects of English are spoken, which have developed differently from these standardized accents, particularly regional dialects. Descriptions of standardized reference accents provide only a limited guide to the phonology of other dialec ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Scottish English
Scottish English is the set of varieties of the English language spoken in Scotland. The transregional, standardised variety is called Scottish Standard English or Standard Scottish English (SSE). Scottish Standard English may be defined as "the characteristic speech of the professional class n Scotlandand the accepted norm in schools". IETF language tag for "Scottish Standard English" is en-scotland. In addition to distinct pronunciation, grammar and expressions, Scottish English has distinctive vocabulary, particularly pertaining to Scottish institutions such as the Church of Scotland, local government and the education and legal systems. Scottish Standard English is at one end of a bipolar linguistic continuum, with focused broad Scots at the other. Scottish English may be influenced to varying degrees by Scots.Stuart-Smith J. ''Scottish English: Phonology'' in Varieties of English: The British Isles, Kortman & Upton (Eds), Mouton de Gruyter, New York 2008. p. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Compensatory Lengthening
Compensatory lengthening in phonology and historical linguistics is the lengthening of a vowel sound that happens upon the loss of a following consonant, usually in the syllable coda, or of a vowel in an adjacent syllable. Lengthening triggered by consonant loss may be considered an extreme form of fusion (Crowley 1997:46). Both types may arise from speakers' attempts to preserve a word's moraic count. Examples English An example from the history of English is the lengthening of vowels that happened when the voiceless velar fricative and its palatal allophone were lost from the language. For example, in the Middle English of Chaucer's time the word ''night'' was phonemically ; later the was lost, but the was lengthened to to compensate, causing the word to be pronounced . (Later the became by the Great Vowel Shift.) Both the Germanic spirant law and the Ingvaeonic nasal spirant law show vowel lengthening compensating for the loss of a nasal. Non-rhotic forms o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cockney
Cockney is a dialect of the English language, mainly spoken in London and its environs, particularly by Londoners with working-class and lower middle class roots. The term ''Cockney'' is also used as a demonym for a person from the East End, or, traditionally, born within earshot of Bow Bells. Estuary English is an intermediate accent between Cockney and Received Pronunciation, also widely spoken in and around London, as well as in wider South Eastern England. In multicultural areas of London, the Cockney dialect is, to an extent, being replaced by Multicultural London English—a new form of speech with significant Cockney influence. Words and phrases Etymology of ''Cockney'' The earliest recorded use of the term is 1362 in passus VI of William Langland's ''Piers Plowman'', where it is used to mean "a small, misshapen Egg as food, egg", from Middle English ''coken'' + ''ey'' ("a rooster, cock's egg"). Concurrently, the List of mythological places, mythical land of luxury Co ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
English-language Vowel Changes Before Historic /r/
In English, many vowel shifts affect only vowels followed by in rhotic dialects, or vowels that were historically followed by that has been elided in non-rhotic dialects. Most of them involve the merging of vowel distinctions, so fewer vowel phonemes occur before than in other positions of a word. Overview In rhotic dialects, is pronounced in most cases. In General American English (GA), is pronounced as an approximant or in most positions, but after some vowels, it is pronounced as ''r''-coloring. In Scottish English, is traditionally pronounced as a flap or trill , and there are no ''r''-colored vowels. In non-rhotic dialects like Received Pronunciation (RP), historic is elided at the end of a syllable, and if the preceding vowel is stressed, it undergoes compensatory lengthening or breaking (diphthongization). Thus, words that historically had often have long vowels or centering diphthongs ending in a schwa , or a diphthong followed by a schwa. * ''ea ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Silent E
In English orthography, many words feature a silent (single, final, non-syllabic ‘e’), most commonly at the end of a word or morpheme. Typically it represents a vowel sound that was formerly pronounced, but became silent letter, silent in late Middle English or Early Modern English. In a large class of words, as a consequence of a series of #History, historical sound changes, including the Great Vowel Shift, the presence of a suffix on the end of a word influenced the development of the preceding vowel, and in a smaller number of cases it affected the pronunciation of a preceding consonant. When the inflection disappeared in speech, but remained as a historical remnant in the spelling, this silent was reinterpreted synchronically as a marker of the surviving sounds. This can be seen in the vowels in word-pairs such as ''rid'' and ''ride'' , in which the presence of the final, unpronounced appears to alter the sound of the preceding . An example with consonants is the wo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Near-open Front Unrounded Vowel
The near-open front unrounded vowel, or near-low front unrounded vowel, is a type of vowel sound. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , a lowercase of the ligature. Both the symbol and the sound are commonly referred to as "ash". The rounded counterpart of , the near-open front rounded vowel (for which the IPA provides no separate symbol) has been reported to occur allophonically in Danish; see open front rounded vowel for more information. In practice, is sometimes used to represent the open front unrounded vowel; see the introduction to that page for more information. In IPA transcriptions of Hungarian and Valencian Valencian can refer to: * Something related to the Valencian Community ( Valencian Country) in Spain * Something related to the city of Valencia * Something related to the province of Valencia in Spain * Something related to the old Kingdom of ..., this vowel is typically written with . Features Occur ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Old English Orthography
Old English ( or , or ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the Early Middle Ages. It developed from the languages brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers in the mid-5th century, and the first Old English literature dates from the mid-7th century. After the Norman Conquest of 1066, English was replaced for several centuries by Anglo-Norman (a type of French) as the language of the upper classes. This is regarded as marking the end of the Old English era, since during the subsequent period the English language was heavily influenced by Anglo-Norman, developing into what is now known as Middle English in England and Early Scots in Scotland. Old English developed from a set of Anglo-Frisian or Ingvaeonic dialects originally spoken by Germanic tribes traditionally known as the Angles, Saxons and Jutes. As the Germanic settlers became dominant in England, their language replac ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Open Back Unrounded Vowel
The open back unrounded vowel, or low back unrounded vowel, is a type of vowel sound, used in some Speech, spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is A. The letter is called ''script a'' because it lacks the extra hook on top of a printed letter ''a'', which corresponds to a different vowel, the open front unrounded vowel. ''Script a'', which has a full length linear stroke on its right, should not be confused with ''turned script a'', , which has the linear stroke on its left and corresponds to a roundedness, rounded version of this vowel, the open back rounded vowel. In some languages (such as Azerbaijani language, Azerbaijani, Estonian language, Estonian, Luxembourgish language, Luxembourgish and Toda language, Toda) there is the near-open back unrounded vowel (a sound between cardinal and ), which can be transcribed in IPA with or . Features Occurrence See also * Index ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Old English Phonology
Old English phonology is the pronunciation system of Old English, the Germanic language spoken on Great Britain from around 450 to 1150 and attested in a body of written texts from the 7th–12th centuries. Its reconstruction is necessarily somewhat speculative, but features of Old English pronunciation have been inferred based on the sounds used in modern varieties of English (including dialects), the spellings used in Old English literature, analysis of Old English poetry, and comparison with other Germanic languages. Some words were pronounced differently in different dialects of Old English. The dialect called West Saxon is the best documented in surviving texts, and so is commonly treated as a default reference in descriptions of Old English, even though it is not a direct ancestor of the modern English language (which is more closely related to the Mercian dialect). Old English had a distinction between short and long (doubled) consonants, at least between vowels (as ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
/æ/ Tensing
The near-open front unrounded vowel, or near-low front unrounded vowel, is a type of vowel sound. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , a lowercase of the ligature. Both the symbol and the sound are commonly referred to as "ash". The rounded counterpart of , the near-open front rounded vowel (for which the IPA provides no separate symbol) has been reported to occur allophonically in Danish; see open front rounded vowel for more information. In practice, is sometimes used to represent the open front unrounded vowel; see the introduction to that page for more information. In IPA transcriptions of Hungarian and Valencian, this vowel is typically written with . Features Occurrence See also * Index of phonetics articles A * Acoustic phonetics * Active articulator * Affricate * Airstream mechanism * Alexander John Ellis * Alexander Melville Bell * Alfred C. Gimson * Allophone * Alveolar approximant () * Alveolar click ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
