🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1991May23.083815.12755@pbs.org> btiffany@pbs.org (Bruce) writes:
> 
> In article <9864@idunno.Princeton.EDU>,
	   rcharman@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Robert Craig Harman) writes:
> > Fourteen vowel sounds, I believe he means; those being:
	      ^^^^^^^^^^^^
> > [...]
> >
> >These each have stressed and unstressed variants (e.g., "sigh" vs. "type"), as
> >well as variations before "l" and "r", but, by and large, 14 is pretty accurate.
> 
> OK, five vowels and 14 vowel sounds.
> 
> But if you're talking about the sounds vowels make, rather than the vowels
> themselves, I can't believe there are only 14.  There must be many, many more.
> Maybe Peter Jennings uses only 14, but if you go to Maine, and then to
> the Appalachians of southwestern Virginia and eastern Kentucky, and then to
> Upstate New York (where they have a pretty unique way of pronouncing the sound
> made in words like "about" and "boat"), and then to Georgia and Alabama, you'll
> compile a lot more than 14 sounds!  Our five vowels truly have many talents!
> 
> But there are 5 vowels.  :-)

First, "vowel" has two definitions: it can be either the "vowel sound"
or one of the letters used to write those sounds.  My dictionary does
not prefer one sense over the other, but if you talk with a linguist,
he/she will much prefer the first meaning over the second.  So, use the
second definition (the characters used to transcribe sounds) if you
must, and if you make yourself clear, but don't insist that we are
wrong to talk about 14 vowels.

Second, English uses a lot of diphthongs as well as vowels.  Roughly
speaking (I'm sure someone will correct me), a diphthong results from
running together two relatively "pure" vowels.  Thus many of the sounds
not on Craig's list, such as "oy" in "toy" (and probably "ow" in
"scow") are diphthongs, not vowels.

I'd also guess that regional accents tend to replace one vowel with
another, rather than adding a vowel, so that while English as it is
spoken around the world may include more than 14 vowels, any native
speaker would use 14 or fewer vowels.  
-- 
Greg Holley     sun!sono!holley     holley@sono.uucp

"My tale is so strange that, were it written with needles on the interior
corner of an eye, yet would it prove a lesson to the circumspect."