lee@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu (Greg Lee) (01/07/89)
From article <600105990.19551@bucasb.bu.edu>, by merrill@bucasb (John Merrill):
>In article <2934@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu> lee@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu (Greg Lee) writes:
" >>the diphthong of "new" is appreciably longer than that of "nu".
" >
" >Huh? There *IS* *NO* dipthong in "new" or "nu", in any dialect of English
" >that I know. Did you perhaps just mean vowel?
"
" No, he meant dipthong. There are dialects of English in which the
" word "new" is clearly pronounced "n[y]u", while the Greek letter "nu"
" is not.
"
" I am not *aware* of a difference between the vowels in my own
" idiolect, and I percieve them both as pure---at least, insofar as any
" speaker of Midwestern American English can be said to have a pure
" vowel in any word she speaks. Greg, is your claim based on phonetic
" measurements, and, if so, what dialect did the speaker(s) use?
I was referring to lax-u + w combination as a diphthong. It is a plain
vowel for some people. A in-glided version is another possibility. The
matter seems completely tangential to the question of whether "nudist
play" and "new display" may be pronounced the same. But I suppose I
could find some published measurements, if anybody really cares. A
likely source would be the monograph on Am. English pronunciation by
Ilse Lehiste and Gordon Peterson (whose title I can't remember now).
" (Follow-ups to sci.lang, please; this is way far afield from NeXT
" boxes, or even cognitive engineering.)
Right, except I thought I ought to reply to your question, first.
Greg, lee@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu