Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2019 July 15

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July 15

British accents

Would a realisation of /oʊ/ as something near [œʏ] be found (in significant numbers) anywhere in Britain? If it is, please do specify an area.
I know it can be realised as [əʏ], and [ə] isn't far off from [œ] (it's the closest sound in RP to [œ], if I remember correctly). TotallyNotSarcasm [lɨi̯v ə me̞sɪ̈dʒ] [kɔnt͡ɹ̠̝̊ɹ̠ɪ̈bjɨʉ̯ʃn̩z] 12:44, 15 July 2019 (UTC)

Please sign and date your posts. Add 4 tildes (~) to the end. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 12:33, 15 July 2019 (UTC)

Feel free to throw in some real word examples. Martinevans123 (talk) 12:38, 15 July 2019 (UTC)

Sorry for forgetting to sign.
Real word examples? Coat /coʊt/, oak /oʊk/, rope /roʊp/, etc. TotallyNotSarcasm [lɨi̯v ə me̞sɪ̈dʒ] [kɔnt͡ɹ̠̝̊ɹ̠ɪ̈bjɨʉ̯ʃn̩z] 12:44, 15 July 2019 (UTC)

You can add the template "YesAutosign" to your user page to trigger a system-generated signature if you fail to sign. (Like it should here.) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Baseball Bugs (talk • contribs) 14:15, 15 July 2019 (UTC)

Can you please provide examples where the [œʏ]; [əʏ]; [ə] and [œ] sounds are used in your own accent, and specify what that is to allow us to provide a valid a meaningful response. Thanks Anton 81.131.40.58 (talk) 12:51, 15 July 2019 (UTC)

You will find a number of academic papers when you search the web for "goat vowel" and "fronting", but the result seems to be usually described more as "əʏ" than as "œʏ". Fut.Perf. ☼ 13:02, 15 July 2019 (UTC)

I've seen "əʏ"; I want to know if there are any with "œʏ". TotallyNotSarcasm [lɨi̯v ə me̞sɪ̈dʒ] [kɔnt͡ɹ̠̝̊ɹ̠ɪ̈bjɨʉ̯ʃn̩z] 13:18, 15 July 2019 (UTC)

TotallyNotSarcasm -- IPA [œ] is not really all that close to IPA [ə] in a phonetic sense, even though (for semi-complicated reasons), sometimes English speakers approximate French [œ] with their [ə] vowel, while French speakers sometimes approximate English [ə] with [œ]. As far as I know, the main trend in quasi-standard London English seems to be [oʊ] → [əʊ] → [eʊ] (where [eʊ] can be perceived as "posh", though not traditional standard RP)... AnonMoos (talk) 13:37, 15 July 2019 (UTC)

Here's one mention, for the vowel in "down". See pp 95-96, where this type of diphthong was observed in a small number of locations in Devon, Somerset, Cornwall and Gloucestershire. (Few enough instances that the researchers call for further study.) 70.67.193.176 (talk) 19:55, 15 July 2019 (UTC)

@TotallyNotSarcasm: Wells says that [œø] is a possible (female) realization of GOAT in cockney. I'd say that it's more or less the same as [œʏ]. Apart from that, [œɨ], [œʉ] and [œː] are (more or less) standard realizations of GOAT in General White South African English (which can theoretically be classified as a Southern British dialect). Kbb2 (ex. Mr KEBAB) (talk) 13:15, 18 July 2019 (UTC)

The second example isn't quite what I wanted, but the first is exactly what I was looking for. I had a feeling it'd be cockney. I remmbered someone asking whether there was a shift of the GOAT vowel to FACE, and [œʏ] is what first came to mind. Thanks for your answer. TotallyNotSarcasm [lɨi̯v ə me̞sɪ̈dʒ] [kɔnt͡ɹ̠̝̊ɹ̠ɪ̈bjɨʉ̯ʃn̩z] 16:24, 19 July 2019 (UTC)

@TotallyNotSarcasm: If you want an example of GOAT sounding like FACE, then Scouse [ɛʉ] is first that comes to my mind, but it's quite variable (as is cockney [œø], which is normally something like [ɐɤ] - more like MOUTH). Kbb2 (ex. Mr KEBAB) (talk) 20:02, 20 July 2019 (UTC)

Original research, but I have lived in East London my whole life (60 years) and have never, ever heard anyone pronounce "goat" with the same vowel-sound as "face", or anything remotely similar, unless I'm missing a linguistic point somewhere. Alansplodge (talk) 18:11, 22 July 2019 (UTC)

Well, apparently they do in Liverpool.TotallyNotSarcasm [lɨi̯v ə me̞sɪ̈dʒ] [kɔnt͡ɹ̠̝̊ɹ̠ɪ̈bjɨʉ̯ʃn̩z] 11:42, 23 July 2019 (UTC)

"Weha"?

I was recently in Carinthia, Austria. At the hotel bar I asked in German if they had any whisky. One of the customers said something like "Weha Whisky? Jack Daniels, Red Label, ...?" What does this "weha" mean? Is it some kind of Austrian dialect, or did I even hear it correctly? JIP | Talk 20:22, 15 July 2019 (UTC)

If I’d have to guess: standard German welchen = "which [kind of]". The l gets somewhat assimilated in Austrian dialects, and the n falls under the table anyway. Cheers ⌘  21:08, 15 July 2019 (UTC)

Yeah, this. – filelakeshoe (t / c) 🐱 21:56, 15 July 2019 (UTC)

This kind of question would be perfect for JackofOz (talk · contribs) or HiLo48 (talk · contribs). ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:50, 15 July 2019 (UTC)

Short for "Jack of Austria", obviously. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 22:32, 15 July 2019 (UTC)

Oops. Time for new glasses. :( ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 13:01, 16 July 2019 (UTC)

Austrian accents can sound weird to people like me who have only learned standard German in school. I remember one time in Carinthia when I had to call a taxi to get back to my hotel. When the taxi driver asked me for the address I said "Irgendstraße achtzehn" ("Irgendstraße" is not a real street but I don't remember the exact name). The taxi driver replied "Irgendstraße ochtzehn?" JIP | Talk 23:15, 15 July 2019 (UTC)

10 Austrian Words that Germans don't understand 77.58.230.187 (talk) 07:25, 16 July 2019 (UTC)

I have to say, I had not encountered any of those words ever before. Good that they explained them. JIP | Talk 10:03, 16 July 2019 (UTC)

Thank you so much, IP 77. What a wonderfully amusing video. And very instructive. Martinevans123 (talk) 20:04, 17 July 2019 (UTC)

Not exactly Jack, but still from Austria:

Specific phonemes are pronounced quite differently, depending on the local dialect. One such example is the fricative ch in local variants of Austrian German. In Carinthia is is almost inaudible (turning into a voiceless glottal fricative) whilst in Tyrol it sounds like a "hard" k-sound (a voiceless velar plosive). In simple terms: Carinthian is a very soft and melodic dialect. There may even be subtle traces of tonal characteristics. Historically (and I am speculating here) this specific dialect may go back to Carolingian Franks who, in various guises, controlled vast areas from todays Bavaria to the Adria, including Carinthia. --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 08:57, 16 July 2019 (UTC)

Could have been nominative case (welcher) rather than accusativ (welchen). The ending -er is Tiefschwa which comes very close to 'a'. --Stilfehler (talk) 15:15, 16 July 2019 (UTC) (native speaker of German)

@Stilfehler: According to Richard Wiese, native speakers of German are unable to distinguish [ɐ] from [a]. The two are basically the same when pronounced as monophthongs (apart from the fact that [ɐ] can be diphthongized to [əɐ] and rhotacized to [ɐʁ] in deliberate speech. But that, again, would be indistinguishable from [aʁ]). The main reason [ɐ] and [a] are assigned different symbols in IPA transcriptions of German is phonemic identification. Kbb2 (ex. Mr KEBAB) (talk) 17:21, 16 July 2019 (UTC)

Some years ago my (English) parents, then living in North Rhine–Westphalia, decided to drive to Austria for the weekend. My father had picked up some German from colleages, but wasn't confident enough to use it extensively in a formal situation, so at the border post he said in German to the Austrian official: "I'm sorry, I don't speak German."

The official replied, in English: "That's all right, neither do I."

{The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 2.122.177.55 (talk) 17:01, 16 July 2019 (UTC)