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Usenet Posted 23 years ago
Usage

Ah = ar, aw = or, aw =/= ah / ar

Where I come from, good old England (north), these equalities hold. However, when chatting on IRC to an American about language, he found it hard to understand why I said aw = or, and kept saying to me "No, aw = ah". I insisted that that was incorrect. I cannot see how aw = ah, as it is firmly ingrained in my head that aw = or, e.g. Law & Order (pronounced Lore and Order using the Intrusive R, dealt with in my other topic). Can someone who understands aw = ah explain to me how s/he sees it, as it is hard for me to realise it. Thanks a lot!

Cheers,
Matt
  

Top answer

[nq:1]Where I come from, good old England (north), these equalities hold. However, when chatting on IRC to an American about ... ah explain to me how s/he sees it, as it is hard for me to realise it.

  • [nq:1]Where I come from, good old England (north), these equalities hold.
  • However, when chatting on IRC to an American about ...
  • ah explain to me how s/he sees it, as it is hard for me to realise it.
  • [/nq] Heads down, everyone; here comes another CINC thread.
  • au (OS/2 and eCS information and software)
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120 Answers
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[nq:1]Where I come from, good old England (north), these equalities hold. However, when chatting on IRC to an American about ... ah explain to me how s/he sees it, as it is hard for me to realise it. Thanks a lot![/nq]
Heads down, everyone; here comes another CINC thread.

Peter Moylan (Email Removed)
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[nq:1]Where I come from, good old England (north), these equalities hold. However, when chatting on IRC to an American about ... ah explain to me how s/he sees it, as it is hard for me to realise it. Thanks a lot![/nq]
This is a case where ASCII IPA might prove useful:

See
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[nq:2]Where I come from, good old England (north), these equalities ... is hard for me to realise it. Thanks a lot![/nq]
[nq:1]This is a case where ASCII IPA might prove useful: See http://www.hpl.hp.com/personal/Evan Kirshenbaum/IPA/ and
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[nq:1]Where I come from, good old England (north), these equalities hold. However, when chatting on IRC to an American about ... ah explain to me how s/he sees it, as it is hard for me to realise it. Thanks a lot![/nq]
As I'm sure you're aware, people speaking English in different parts of the world have different pronunciations for the same words. However, what is less well-known is that this
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[nq:1]Forgetting ASCII IPA for the moment, one convention that's useful isto surround a sound or group of sounds as they might be found in actualEnglish text with angled brackets, like so: "The syllable 'shun' in Englishis sometimes spelled , sometimes , sometimes ."[/nq]
That sentence seems to me to be assuming that schwa (as in most words spelt ) can be identified with /V/ (as in ), which I
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[nq:1]Here are some of the English vowel classes that pattern differentlyin different regional dialects: the "short a" class - in ... the "or" class - in words like "order" and "port" the "ore" class - in words like "hoarse" and "bore"[/nq]
Actually, "port" is in the "ore" class for me, and this is supported by Chambers and OED 2nd edition. So are most words, for that matter.
[nq:1]In sta
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[nq:1]Where I come from, good old England (north), these equalities hold. However, when chatting on IRC to an American about ... = ah explain to me how s/hesees it, as it is hard for me to realise it. Thanks a lot![/nq]
Two points, both of which affect me:
Not all northern English speakers are non-rhotic. Have you been to Accrington? I think my rhoticity came from Ireland, though.
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[nq:1]I have always thought, and grown up thinking, that the sounds represented by the following pairs of letters are the ... I hope I have clarified the situation for you, and apologies for writing it rather clumsily in the first place.[/nq]
It depends a lot on what part of America you're from. We have regional accents, too, you know. I'm from California, myself. In the western part of the US
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[nq:1]A few years ago, I recorded myself saying father, bother, on, swan, all, sorry, wash, saw, pop, caught and put ... those are all the same vowel, although the following L and R in "all" and "sorry" affect the color slightly.[/nq]
My recollection is that there were at least a couple of distinct allophones there. My conclusion, and I think R J Valentine shared it, was that, despite your CIC
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[nq:1][/nq]
This subject has been discussed previously in this group. When the schwa sign is used for /V/ as well as the unstressed vowel, the two are considered to be two allophones of the same phoneme. This is how Evan Kirschenbaum sees it, and how the *Merriam-Webster* dictionaries treat it.

*Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary,* 11th ed., uses the schwa in the following ways.

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