Talk:Phonological history of English consonant clusters/Archive 1

message: from article:
: "Dictionaries usually transcribe the sound of the wh in words like whine in accents without the merger as /hw/, but some phonologists think that  would be a better representation of the sound."
whose analyses are these? thanks. peace – ishwar  (speak) 17:00, 25 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I've added an IPA template to your post, Ishwar.  I hope you don't mind. Jimp 01:38, 6 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: who?

message: ===Historical pronunciation===
Does anyone have any reference that suggests that the yod-ful pronunciations of some of these words are historically prior to the "dropped" pronunciations?  It strikes me that the article is actually saying that only a handful of dialects in the British Isles use them.  
Some of the alleged historical pronunciations would appear to violate basic constraints of English phonology.  "After / ɹ/: rude, rule, true, and threw are pronounced [ ɹu:d], [ ɹu:l], [t ɹu:] and [ θ ɹu:] instead of [ɹju:d], [ ɹju:l], [t ɹju:] and [ θ ɹju:]."  Were a yod present in these words, they would acquire a second syllable.  
I would call nonsense on the whole thing, but for the fact that my own speech has an echo of some of this.  I do not have /ju:/ in any of these words, but in many of them I have /y:/ where this article suggests /ju:/: /ny:/ new, /ty:n/ tune, /y:s/ or /jy:s/ use and so forth.  There may be something to this, but as it stands I am not sure.  -- Smerdis of Tlön 15:11, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: If you look at Kenyon & Knott's Pronouncing Dictionary of American English you will see descriptions of accents where pairs like "rude"/"rood", "chews"/"choose", and even "yew"/"you" are distinct. But where they are distinct, the first members of each set are pronounced with the diphthong , not with  . It's also common for people with accents like yours to distinguish "lute"  from "loot" . (I've never heard that the vowel is as far forward as [y], as you transcribed it.) --Angr 09:06, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)

text: My source is John C. Wells's book Accents of English (p. 207), where he writes: "In RP there is variability in the environment of a preceding , as in , , ,  lewd". --Angr/ 11:26, 25 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I speak Australian Eng. & pronounce no [j] in "Zeus". Jimp 15:02, 30 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: In The Oxford English Dictionary it is pronounced as (zjuːs) though. Artur Buchhorn 22:56, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

text: I'm an RP-speaker, and I've never heard yod-dropping in either ‘Zeus’ or ‘enthusiasm’ from another RP-speaker.  Again, the OED agrees.  Additionally, ‘enthusiasm’ is usually pronounced with an /ɛ/. Twey (talk) 17:56, 16 July 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Angr must have the pin-pen merger like me then.  It causes many screw ups. Thegryseone (talk) 18:03, 16 July 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: I copied Wells's transcription of the word, not my own. And enthusiasm is only pronounced with an /ɛ/ if you put special emphasis on that syllable. In ordinary, casual speech it would be reduced to /ɪ/ or /ə/. +Angr 18:07, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

text: Oh, I see.  That makes sense, because it's  an unstressed syllable.  However, for people who have the pin-pen merger it would always be /ɪ/. Thegryseone (talk) 18:24, 16 July 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Moved from [[Talk:Yod-dropping]]

message: Does anyone have any reference that suggests that the yod-ful pronunciations of some of these words are historically prior to the "dropped" pronunciations?  It strikes me that the article is actually saying that only a handful of dialects in the British Isles use them.  
Some of the alleged historical pronunciations would appear to violate basic constraints of English phonology.  "After / ɹ/: rude, rule, true, and threw are pronounced [ ɹu:d], [ ɹu:l], [t ɹu:] and [ θ ɹu:] instead of [ɹju:d], [ ɹju:l], [t ɹju:] and [ θ ɹju:]."  Were a yod present in these words, they would acquire a second syllable.  
I would call nonsense on the whole thing, but for the fact that my own speech has an echo of some of this.  I do not have /ju:/ in any of these words, but in many of them I have /y:/ where this article suggests /ju:/: /ny:/ new, /ty:n/ tune, /y:s/ or /jy:s/ use and so forth.  There may be something to this, but as it stands I am not sure.  -- Smerdis of Tlön 15:11, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: If you look at Kenyon & Knott's Pronouncing Dictionary of American English you will see descriptions of accents where pairs like "rude"/"rood", "chews"/"choose", and even "yew"/"you" are distinct. But where they are distinct, the first members of each set are pronounced with the diphthong , not with  . It's also common for people with accents like yours to distinguish "lute"  from "loot" . (I've never heard that the vowel is as far forward as [y], as you transcribed it.) --Angr 09:06, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Historical pronunciation

message: I've added the  tag to this article because of the recent additions. Someone needs to go through and add links to things that have Wikipedia articles, remove mentions of maps that aren't here, add references for ANAE, PEAS, LAMSAS, Jespersen, etc., and generally change what smells strongly of a copyvio from another site (though I can't find where it comes from) into a Wikipedia article. --Angr/ 15:46, 30 May 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  cleanup tag 

message: AxSkov, do you really pronounce Matthew  with the stress on the second syllable? I've only ever heard , with the stress on the first syllable. --Angr/ 11:22, 3 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Matthew 

message: I changed the page to say that the yod in the word "Zeus" is dropped only in North American English, but Angr changed it back again, saying that yod dropping after /z/ is heard among some RP speakers too.  I haven't heard this, and I'm interested - comments anyone? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Hughcharlesparker (talk • contribs) 08:54, 25 October 2005  (UTC)
:My source is John C. Wells's book Accents of English (p. 207), where he writes: "In RP there is variability in the environment of a preceding , as in , , ,  lewd". --Angr/ 11:26, 25 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I speak Australian Eng. & pronounce no [j] in "Zeus". Jimp 15:02, 30 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: In The Oxford English Dictionary it is pronounced as (zjuːs) though. Artur Buchhorn 22:56, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

text: I'm an RP-speaker, and I've never heard yod-dropping in either ‘Zeus’ or ‘enthusiasm’ from another RP-speaker.  Again, the OED agrees.  Additionally, ‘enthusiasm’ is usually pronounced with an /ɛ/. Twey (talk) 17:56, 16 July 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Angr must have the pin-pen merger like me then.  It causes many screw ups. Thegryseone (talk) 18:03, 16 July 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: I copied Wells's transcription of the word, not my own. And enthusiasm is only pronounced with an /ɛ/ if you put special emphasis on that syllable. In ordinary, casual speech it would be reduced to /ɪ/ or /ə/. +Angr 18:07, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

text: Oh, I see.  That makes sense, because it's  an unstressed syllable.  However, for people who have the pin-pen merger it would always be /ɪ/. Thegryseone (talk) 18:24, 16 July 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Zeus 

message: :(an exception to this is the name Matthew )
I don't think is a real exception. Isn't it due to the stress? --Ptcamn 07:57, 31 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't think is a real exception either but I think it's due to syllable division, i.e. , like volume. Jimp 15:29, 3 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: You're both right. It has that syllable division because of the stress, and it's no different from volume. I'm removing it. --Angr (t·c) 15:35, 3 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Matthew

message: Thanks for adding sources. Unfortunately, http://www.rehabmed.ualberta.ca/spa/phonology/features.html doesn't work for me (I get "The page cannot be found", but I'll try again later in case it's just temporarily broken). And http://www.indiana.edu/~hlw/PhonProcess/accents.html discusses the dropping of final consonants, but does not discuss the aspect I actually wanted sources for, the claim the the plural of tes' is tesses. --Angr/ 05:49, 30 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Okay, I found the link. It's at http://www.rehabmed.ualberta.ca/spa/phonology/Features.html with a capital F. And it doesn't discuss plurals like tesses either. --Angr/ 05:56, 30 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Okay, here are two sources that do discuss plurals like tesses http://courses.essex.ac.uk/lg/lg449/AAVEfeatureList.htm and http://www.stanford.edu/~rickford/ebonics/EbonicsExamples.html. I've added them to the sources list. 64.200.124.189 23:32, 30 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Moved from [[Talk:Final consonant cluster reduction]]

message: The usage of AAVE and African American Vernacular English aren't consistent/in good form, requesting fixage Dextrose (talk) 05:07, 4 July 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: . ;-) —Angr 05:31, 4 July 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Acronym usage 

message: # Yod-coalescence: I don't see sj -> ʒ, as in "resume" (I think most australians pronounce it that way).
:Actually, looking closer, the examples are unrepresentative: 4 examples of tj, 3 of dj, and none of sj or zj. Stevage 17:45, 16 April 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Just a comment, that would actually be zj >  since the "s" in resume is voiced for all dialects (as far as I'm aware of).  — Æµ§œš¹ [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi] 20:14, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

text: Err, yes. Anyway I've made the changes I suggested, got someone to check them for me. Stevage 04:40, 28 April 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Two points/questions 

message: The article appears to imply that yod-dropping is universal or near universal in General American. However, my impression listening to the news in the U.S. is that a reasonably large proportion of journalists (who in other respects are GA speakers) do not drop yods, larger than would be suggested by the map anyway. I myself am a yod-keeper, but I'm Canadian, hence not a speaker of GA. 
I don't know if you can simply deduce from the map that yod-keeping is not an option in GA. It may be a phenomenon something like RP in Britain, in the sense that you can't point to a decent-sized geographic area in England where RP speakers are in the majority, yet the accent is very prominent in the media.
I think that Canadian and American yod-keepers should be given a fuller description. In particular, the environments in which North Americans keep yods are not the same as for Britons. North Americans seldom pronounce lewd the way Britons do, and generally drop yods after s and z as well (except in a few words like assume and resume). On the other hand, North American yod-keepers do not drop yods after n, d, t and th.
In particular, I would question the assertion in the article that a significant number of  Southerners in the U.S. pronounce lute the way Britons do. This is quite a different matter from dew/do.
I don't have a reference for this at the moment, but I seem to remember that the environments in which North Americans keep yods are mentioned in the front matter in Merriam-Webster dictionaries, of which I don't have any available. One would expect some of this information, as well as information about the extent of yod-dropping in Canada, to be available in the Atlas of North American English too, but unfortunately I don't have access to that either. 
It would be good if someone could check the sources to verify whether the assertions in the article are overstatements. 82.124.231.186 (talk) 22:36, 30 March 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Yod-dropping section

message: I don't think I've seen this one cover'd in any of the dozens of pages on English. Namely, words like fence, lance, prince, Vincent appear to alternate between /ns/ in some dialects and /nts/ in others. I'm not even sure if it's actually a merger from /ns/ to /nts/, or perhaps a retention from the original French in this particular context? since I've seen nothing hinting at affrication in plurals of /n/-final words. --Trɔpʏliʊm • blah 22:16, 20 May 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: I believe it's a form of intrusive consonant where an epinthetical [t] is inserted between the [n] and [s].  — Æµ§œš¹ [aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi] 00:09, 21 May 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Note that the plurals of /n/-final words end in /nz/, not /ns/. But there are definitely dialects where tense and tents are homophones. +Angr 06:47, 21 May 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Wells (1970) describes it as avoidance of the sequence  by way of epenthesizing /t/ (yes, he uses slashes) and says it's rare in most of Northern England and Wales though some Northern Englanders merge prince and prints because they omit the /t/ from  (that is, both prince and prints are .  This sort of thing also occurs with other nasal+fricative clusters like Humphrey, Thomson, lunch, and lens.  Should we include this in the article? — Æµ§œš¹ [aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi] 03:05, 31 May 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Prince-prints merger 

message: ... should actually be called otherwise, since there was never any [hw] in the first word, as can be seen in any etymological dictionary. 89.231.112.123 (talk) 23:19, 9 September 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree. e.g. 'whale-wail'; 'which-witch'; 'what-watt'; 'where-wear'; 'why-y'...? Ceartas 22:42, 9 January 2011 (UTC)
replies: text:  That's the whine-wine merger, which is different. 89.231 is talking about the change of /hw/ to /h/ before certain rounded vowels, as in who. Spelling can trip you up, though, because some words where wh is pronounced /h/ have always been pronounced with /h/, and were spelled with h, not hw in Old English. Examples include whole < OE hāl and whore < OE hore. —Angr (talk) 21:06, 12 January 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Whole-hole merger... 

message: Are yod-coalescence and palatalization related? --Unnecessary stuff (talk) 18:02, 17 November 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Palatalization is a fairly ambiguous term.  You could call yod-coalescence a form of palatalization, depending on what it means. — Æµ§œš¹ [aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi] 18:12, 17 November 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  yod-coalescence and palatalization 

message: I haven't seen this particular phenomena addressed yet. (If it has please direct me).
I've noticed (I live in the Pacific Northwest) that quite often final /t/'s are left off of -st words usually when the next word starts with a plosive (though sometimes even with other consonants)
example: "the best part" becomes  "ðə ˈbɛs paɹʔ"
Duckgum (talk) 00:25, 22 April 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  t-dropping before plosives 

message: In my experience, I have found that the pronunciation of "dew" as /ˈdʒuː/ is far more widespread than the article says. It is not limited to South East-based accents; I think most British accents do it. The most obvious example is "tune", where /ˈtuːn/ to most British people sounds American. As well as this, many British people find fun in the pronunciation of "stupid", which I believe is the same sort of thing. Unfortunately, I can't think of how you could get evidence for this.
N4m3 (talk) 19:28, 8 November 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Yod coalescence in stressed syllables 

message: I am certain I have heard "accurate" pronounced /ˈækɝǝt/, and I think I've heard this phenomenon in other words. Yod-dropping afer non-coronals is only mentioned in connection with East Anglia, but I have heard this example from Southerners (e.g. Mike Gundy). (suoı̣ʇnqı̣ɹʇuoɔ · ʞlɐʇ) nɯnuı̣ɥԀ 20:54, 30 May 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Yod-dropping after velars in unstressed syllables in Southern U.S. 

message: Speaking of Mike Gundy :-)... Many people in Oklahoma call his school "OʃU" /oʊ ɛʃ ju/. I think this is a form of heterosyllabic yod-coalescence which does not result in elimination of the yod. (suoı̣ʇnqı̣ɹʇuoɔ · ʞlɐʇ) nɯnuı̣ɥԀ 21:26, 30 May 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: Yod-coalescence across word boundaries is very common in virtually all dialects of English; that's where things like gotcha come from. If you can find a source for this and the yod-dropping in accurate you mentioned in the previous thread, go right ahead and add them. Angr (talk) 10:01, 31 May 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: I think what's different about my example is that the syllable is stressed—a case in which the yod would be dropped if there wasn't a word boundary. And as I mentioned, the [s]→[ʃ] change does not eliminate the yod. I was kind of hoping someone else might have a source :-(. (suoı̣ʇnqı̣ɹʇuoɔ · ʞlɐʇ) nɯnuı̣ɥԀ 19:57, 3 June 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Yod-coalescence in initialisms 

message: : 
: 
No kidding.  Are such tautologies helpful?  Would this be worse?
:  was replaced with  before the vowels  and  in Old English.
—Tamfang (talk) 07:09, 28 September 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  tautologies 

message: I'm no expert in this but I note that some examples are shown in phonetic notation with brackets [.] and some with in phonemic notation with slashes /.../. Should they not all be phonetic? Even if it is not academically significant, consistency would be an improvement! --Norman Paterson
121.79.233.250 (talk) 02:10, 19 December 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: I think both phonemic and phonetic notation have to be used here in different cases. Phonemic is appropriate for specifying the environment where sound change happens, and phonetic for the result of the sound change — though the two aren't used consistently this way in the article and I could be wrong. — Eru·tuon 02:43, 19 December 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Phonetic vs phonemic notation 

message: You made a thorough overhaul of this article a couple of months ago.  Inter alia, you changed numerous section and subsection titles.  This was good, I think, but unhappily it "half-broke" some links and redirects to these specific sections.  I noticed this, when I followed a link via a redirect, Wh-cluster reductions, which led me to the top of the article page; which was not very helpful.  The precise redirect was to Phonological history of English consonant clusters#Wh-cluster reductions, which of course the wiki interpreter could no longer find an anchor for.
I'll correct that particular redir; but there seems to be a few others.  You should be best apt to make the corrections, since you probably recall more or less what the new titles replacing the old ones are.  If you have the time, could you please browse https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:WhatLinksHere/Phonological_history_of_English_consonant_clusters&hidelinks=1, and try to fix those of the links that are "half-broken"? JoergenB (talk) 17:13, 2 January 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: Well spotted, and good that you fixed that redirect, but as far as I can tell all of the "reasonable" redirects on the list are still OK or have now been fixed. There are admittedly a lot of redirects based on innovative phrases like "hew-hue merger" and so on, that presumably nobody will ever type in (since they are pure inventions, at least as far as Google Books and Scholar are concerned) - I don't feel particularly motivated to spend my time fixing these; in the unlikely event that anyone ever uses them, they'll just have to seek out the relevant section for themselves, is my view on the matter. W. P. Uzer (talk) 19:14, 2 January 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Half-broken links