🚀 go-pugleaf

[Hey, folks, it isn't _that_ hard to give a discussion an appropriate subject
 line, really; "umlaute" indeed.]

 holley@sono.uucp (Greg Holley) writes:
> btiffany@pbs.org (Bruce) writes:

>> 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. :-)

> 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.

Wish I could give a reference, but no go. I remember
reading, however, that in the Georgia/Alabama area,
linguists/phoneticists can reliably distinguish 22
vowel sounds in use by the same speakers. It is only
the clipped-speech New Englander that must live with an
impoverished 14; I think your hypothesis fails. ;-)

Kent, the man from xanth.
<xanthian@Zorch.SF-Bay.ORG> <xanthian@well.sf.ca.us>