--- In cybalist@..., Piotr Gasiorowski <piotr.gasiorowski@...>
wrote:
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: richardwordingham
> To: cybalist@...
> Sent: Tuesday, August 06, 2002 9:57 PM
> Subject: [tied] Re: Retroflexes in Sanskrit
>
>
>
> > What is the issue? Is it a general issue with diphthongs.
>
> It is. It's surprising in how many ways poor English diphthongs
have been dissected. West of the big water most linguists use
transcriptions like /ay, oy (= IPA aj, oj), aw/ (a vowel plus a
glide) for what their British colleagues write /aI, aU, OI/ (and
claim to be unitary phonemes in their local tradition, shared by
numerous continental Europeans). Dialectal problems apart, there is
also some disagreement as to which vowels are "real" diphthongs and
whether all "offglides" count as separate segments (/i, e, u, o/,
or /Iy, Ey, Uw, Ow/?). And this uncertainty is what we find in the
most extensively studied modern language!
I get the impression English has one of the more chaotic vowel
systems. Is this a valid impression?
> > For myself, I would not be able to decide which vowel phoneme
the '/O/' belonged to. My idiolect may be of interest. Although I
pronounce 'groin' /groin/ (one syllable), I pronounce 'coin' /coiin/
(two syllables).
>
> They have a different etymological vowel each: groin < grine < ME
grynde (/OI/ and /aI/ used to be confused a good deal in early Modern
English and are still confused in some varieties of Scottish English,
where <vice> and <voice> are homophones), while <coin> had [ui ~ oi]
in Middle English (reflecting Old French /u/ before a palatal nasal <
Lat. cuneu-). Are you from the north, by any chance? John C. Wells
wonders (on page 300 of his _Accents of English_ [vol. 2]): "why do I
say /'kOIIn/ for _coin_ when everyone else says /kOIn/?" He calls it
a "personal idiosyncrasy", but if you have this pronunciation as well
it may be something else, and there may be a dialectal or historical
reason for it.
I come from East Anglia, starting school in Huntingdonshire, but I
moved to the Southernmost part of the North when I was a boy. My
vowels are non-posh RP (long in 'pass', short in 'salt' and 'off').
My parents stopped me merging /&/ (not quite schwa) and /u/ under
local Northern influence. However, I have very old (possibly pre-
move) memories of thinking that the spelling of 'coin' was odd. A
sibling who picked up more of the local Northern accent has commented
on my odd pronunciation of the word.
The sequence /oin/ feels difficult to me. I have no problem
with 'join', but in words like 'Boyne', 'groin' and 'loin', which I
learnt by reading, I feel that I that I have made a conscious effort
to rhyme them with 'join' rather than 'coin'. I will try and keep
my ears open, and report back if I learn anything. My personal
feeling is that the reason for /coiin/ is developmental rather than
historical.
Richard.