From: Miguel Carrasquer
Message: 40650
Date: 2005-09-25
>Richard Wordingham wrote:That's hardly a significant difference.
>>>
>>> 1) The Late Common Slavic vowel system had no a's. The British
>>> English system has not either (neither front /æ/, central /^/ nor
>>> back /O/
>> are low
>>> vowels, and we are not talking about long vowels like /a:/).
>>
>> British English is too vague a term here. There are plenty of
>> dialects in which /æ/ is [a] - it's the typical Northern realisation
>> and *now* apparently the best description of the RP system. On the
>> other hand, a Birmingham (England, not Alabama) /æ/ is possibly as
>> high as [E]. By back [O] I presume you mean the vowel of 'cot' - but
>> that is low and not mid-low.
>
>No, the vowel of 'cot' is not fully low, see
>http://faculty.washington.edu/dillon/PhonResources/vowels.html
>and compare BrEng [A.] and AmEng [A] (both are the vowels of 'cot') - theThe main thing is that it's as low as possible in BrEng.
>former is higher. The American sound is lower (and unrounded) - if it is
>lower, the British sound is not as low as possible.