TaiwanPofLee
Member
- Joined
- Nov 27, 2014
- Member Type
- Academic
- Native Language
- Chinese
- Home Country
- Taiwan
- Current Location
- Taiwan
How many vowel phonemes you think are there now in standard (RP or General American ) English pronunciation?
My question especially concerns a changing trend in vowel phonemes of American English.
Please see the Pronunciation Symbols used by the Merriam-Webster English dictionary.
http://www.merriam-webster.com/pronsymbols.html
Hi, Taiwan! Thanks for the link. I looked at it. What are you wondering? What trend do you mean? How important is the number?
Hi, Charlie!
The Americans are merging, or have merged, the pronunciations of letters a as in abut, u as in abut and e as in kitten into one same phoneme. So Obama said to Elizabeth that her mother was late for the bus.
British "bottles" can be Bah uls. Be careful with generalizations.
For me, it's Americans who use /ah/ for 'o', as in 'Stahp, or ah'll shoot!'.
British colonies in America rebelled, separated, developed, and changed the English language.
So Obama said to Elizabeth that her aunt was robbed in the center of the new borough.