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22-Sep-2007, 00:41
| | Senior Member | | Join Date: Sep 2007 Country: spain
Posts: 713
Current Location: thailand First Language: spanish Member Type: Student or Learner | |  mail,sale,male
Hi all native speakers
I 've heard many people including native speakers say the words 'mail', 'male', 'sale' as /mel/, /mel/, /sel/ instead of the correct pronounciation /meil/, /mei/, /seil/, why?
Many thanks
Peter |
22-Sep-2007, 09:34
|  | VIP Member | | Join Date: Sep 2007 Country: Canada
Posts: 5,548
Current Location: Shanghai, China First Language: English Member Type: English Teacher | | Re: mail,sale,male
/e/ and /ey/ are not distinctive in English. For example, pronounce /meyl/ as [mel] and it won't change the word's meaning. From a phonetic point of view, /ey/ is longer than /e/ but not that much longer because the off-glide /-y/ is slight. A linguist can hear the different between /e:/ and /ey/, but as for the everyday person, there's no harm in pronouncing e.g., sale as [se:l] or [sel] since it doesn't change the meaning of the word. | | The Following User Says Thank You to Soup For This Useful Post: | |
22-Sep-2007, 10:11
|  | Moderator | | Join Date: Jul 2006 Country: England (South East)
Posts: 7,648
Current Location: England (South East) First Language: English Member Type: English Teacher | | Re: mail,sale,male
Quote:
Originally Posted by Soup  /e/ and /ey/ are not distinctive in English. For example, pronounce /meyl/ as [mel] and it won't change the word's meaning. From a phonetic point of view, /ey/ is longer than /e/ but not that much longer because the off-glide /-y/ is slight. A linguist can hear the different between /e:/ and /ey/, but as for the everyday person, there's no harm in pronouncing e.g., sale as [se:l] or [sel] since it doesn't change the meaning of the word. | Yes - note the colon; someone who isn't a linguist can surely hear the difference between "sell" and "sale". 
b |
22-Sep-2007, 10:36
| | VIP Member | | Join Date: Sep 2007 Country: Canada
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Current Location: Shanghai, China First Language: English Member Type: English Teacher | | Re: mail,sale,male
Quote:
Originally Posted by BobK Yes - note the colon; someone who isn't a linguist can surely hear the difference between "sell" and "sale".
b | Sell and sale are distinctive, though, no matter if the vowel is long ([:]) or short; they house different vowels:
sell, s[ɛ]ll (mid-front lax vowel)
sale, s[ey]l (off-glide: mid-front tense vowel + high-front y)
sell, e as in the sound of e in b ed.
sale, a as in the sound of a in ale. | | The Following User Says Thank You to Soup For This Useful Post: | |
23-Sep-2007, 17:02
| | Moderator | | Join Date: Jul 2006 Country: England (South East)
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Current Location: England (South East) First Language: English Member Type: English Teacher | | Re: mail,sale,male
Quote:
Originally Posted by Soup Sell and sale are distinctive, though, no matter if the vowel is long ([:]) or short; they house different vowels:
sell, s[ɛ]ll (mid-front lax vowel)
sale, s[ey]l (off-glide: mid-front tense vowel + high-front y)
... |  It seems to me that your "[ɛ]" might be confused with Peter's "/e/". It's a shame that OUP, for their widely used phonemic chart (I haven't seen it online, except for a bootleg copy of my own!), use "/e/". Quote:
Originally Posted by peter123 Hi all native speakers
I 've heard many people including native speakers say the words 'mail', 'male', 'sale' as /mel/, /mel/, /sel/ instead of the correct pronounciation /meil/, /mei/, /seil/, why?
Many thanks
Peter | b | | The Following User Says Thank You to BobK For This Useful Post: | |
24-Sep-2007, 12:51
| | VIP Member | | Join Date: Sep 2007 Country: Canada
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Current Location: Shanghai, China First Language: English Member Type: English Teacher | | Re: mail,sale,male
Quote:
Originally Posted by BobK It seems to me that your "[ɛ]" might be confused with Peter's "/e/". It's a shame that OUP, for their widely used phonemic chart (I haven't seen it online, except for a bootleg copy of my own!), use "/e/". | Hold on. I seem to recall reading somewhere--could have been in college--that where American English has /ey/, British English has /e/. Is that true? | | The Following User Says Thank You to Soup For This Useful Post: | |
24-Sep-2007, 13:14
| | Moderator | | Join Date: Jul 2006 Country: England (South East)
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Current Location: England (South East) First Language: English Member Type: English Teacher | | Re: mail,sale,male
Quote:
Originally Posted by Soup Hold on. I seem to recall reading somewhere--could have been in college--that where American English has /ey/, British English has /e/. Is that true? | On that phonemic chart I mentioned, it's the diphthong /eɪ/. I've seen it represented phonetically as [ej]. There are some dialects of Br E that have a close [e] monophthong, but RP has a diphthong, which I believe is the same (or almost the same) as your /ey/.
b | | The Following User Says Thank You to BobK For This Useful Post: | |
24-Sep-2007, 14:31
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Current Location: Shanghai, China First Language: English Member Type: English Teacher | | Re: mail,sale,male
Yes. That's right. And the process is called monophthongization. There are also lax vowel variants for y (also written j):
[eˆ] (a lax high central vowel)
[eI] (a lax high front vowel)
I believe, but could be wrong, that the second one is Canadian. The first one is US, New England area (I think): http://www.ling.upenn.edu/~dinkin/TLN/TLNPWPL.pdf | | The Following User Says Thank You to Soup For This Useful Post: | |
05-Jun-2008, 06:24
| | Senior Member | | Join Date: Sep 2007 Country: spain
Posts: 713
Current Location: thailand First Language: spanish Member Type: Student or Learner | | Re: mail,sale,male
Hi there,
But I often hear people saying the word the 'sale' with the same sound in 'sell'. Both of them are pronounced as [e] sound. Right?
Thanks
pete |
12-Jun-2008, 18:05
| | Newbie | | Join Date: Jun 2008 Country: United Kingdom
Posts: 6
Current Location: United Kingdom First Language: English Member Type: Other | | Re: mail,sale,male
You should really pronounce sale with an ey sound as in "day". Sale is a noun. Sell (the verb) has the short e sound pronounced as in "egg". Whether you sound the diphthong ei/ey or not doesn't really matter. However if you pronounce sale the same as sell, most native English speakers would think you had made a grammatical error confusing the noun with the verb.
I am going to a sale (noun)
I am going to sell (verb) my house.
If you said "I am going to sale my house", it might sound like the verb "sail" - I have an image of a man sailing his house down the river.
If you said "I am going to a sell". People might confuse it with a cell - like a prison cell and might imagine you are being sent to prison.
The rule here is that A followed by a consonant then an E generally sounds like ey/ei. Similar words are dale, vale, pale. This rule applies to many other words such as: mate, fate, make, bake, cake etc.
E followed by a double consonant is usually a short e as in egg. Similarly you have tell, bell, fell, dell, smell, teller, better, letter.
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