bredmond812
New member
- Joined
- Oct 15, 2018
- Member Type
- Interested in Language
- Native Language
- English
- Home Country
- United States
- Current Location
- United States
My problem: I want to find a systematic explanation of vowel length rules for American English
Discussion: Some sources i look at say that American English does not use vowel length. Some sources say that it does. in either case, the double dots are not used in phonetics for American English. This seems wrong, as I find places where if you want to really distinguish the sounds (as you would if you put the phonetic symbols in square brackets [] instead of forward slashes //.
For example, compare the following words office, officer, as well as apple, ask. Looking at the first pair, i feel that office has a vowel length of 1 segment, whereas officer has a length of 2 segments. the o in officer seems to have a longer sustain, to use music parlance. Looking at the second words,
apple has a vowel length of 1 segment, and ask has a vowel length of 2 segments or maybe even just 1 segment, but with additional feature. The a in ask starts high and drops low quite suddenly before it proceeds to the "s" sound. I havent been able to find a clear discussion of this, though in the first case it seems to be that the short vowels are used before fortis sounds, and the long vowels are used in all other cases.
Can anybody provide me some insight on the second case?
Discussion: Some sources i look at say that American English does not use vowel length. Some sources say that it does. in either case, the double dots are not used in phonetics for American English. This seems wrong, as I find places where if you want to really distinguish the sounds (as you would if you put the phonetic symbols in square brackets [] instead of forward slashes //.
For example, compare the following words office, officer, as well as apple, ask. Looking at the first pair, i feel that office has a vowel length of 1 segment, whereas officer has a length of 2 segments. the o in officer seems to have a longer sustain, to use music parlance. Looking at the second words,
apple has a vowel length of 1 segment, and ask has a vowel length of 2 segments or maybe even just 1 segment, but with additional feature. The a in ask starts high and drops low quite suddenly before it proceeds to the "s" sound. I havent been able to find a clear discussion of this, though in the first case it seems to be that the short vowels are used before fortis sounds, and the long vowels are used in all other cases.
Can anybody provide me some insight on the second case?