Talk:Pronunciation of English ⟨a⟩

message: According to the article:
::Mass (truncation of Massachusetts) has /æ/, not /eə/ like mass
 
::Function words and irregular verb tenses have lax /æ/, even in an environment which would usually cause tensing: 
::and (a function word) has /æ/, not /eə/ like sand 
::ran (an irregular verb tense) has /æ/, not /eə/ like man 
In my experience, "Mass" for "Massachusetts" and (especially) "ran" often do have /eə/ in New York (as in my own speech).  (/æ/ does seem to be regular in "and" and in "Massachusetts.")
38.117.238.82 03:13, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The source for that claim is Benua (1995), listed in the references. —Angr 06:04, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Not sure how relevant sources from Labov in the 70s and 80s, or even Benua in 1995 (now 20 years ago) are. This page doesn't seem to reflect the reality in many of the relevant parts of the US-- i.e. nowadays in the many non-urban areas of the Northeast as well as California (the former supposedly being originally the source of the /ae/ tensing as per Labov?), /ae/-tensing doesn't even seem productive anymore. Bad, mass, clap and so on are all pronounced with /ae/, little difference from the British pronunciation except that it is occasionally long; sad and glad rhyme, and the only cases with something resembling /ae/-tensing seem to be before nasals (but this phenomenon is absent in New York City, Long Island, etc). Speakers seem to still consider this a "short A" and treat it so in speech, and yet the (former) /ae/ of rang, sang is pronounced, and considered, almost universally as /e/ (across at least non-Southern accents), the "long A". Only the elderly still pronounce rang with /ae/. --91.185.179.158 (talk) 15:55, 9 April 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: I disagree. /e/ in rang is common but not universal among young speakers. I certainly know 20-somethings who say /æ/. Wolfdog (talk) 23:39, 24 July 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: I also disagree.  I have a "tense" a in bad and mass (though not in clap).  (Though I raise the a, I usually don't put in a schwa after it.  This seems quite common throughout the country.)  Also, in my experience, the a of rang, sang, thank, etc. was usually /ae/, but with a short y glide after (/aej/), as in my own speech.  What seems to me to be the case is that this is merging with the I of thing, think, etc. (which is usually higher than a "normal" short i).  (I call it the "think/thank" merger.)  Anyone else think so? Kostaki mou (talk) 18:41, 27 June 2017 (UTC)
thread_title: I beg to differ

message: The example given for a distinction in "jam" is interesting, but I'm not sure it really applies only to fruit preserves.  I think someone who is "caught in a jam" might have the same somewhat lenghthened æː (relative to "jam it in there") - but that's by American standards, which might be different, and I'm not sure about it. 70.15.116.59 (talk) 16:56, 12 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  jam 

message: Rather has the broad A in Southeastern English English, right?  I'm pretty sure I've heard it pronounced that way, but it's not mentioned in the article. 208.104.45.20 (talk) 23:26, 2 June 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, it does, but the article makes no attempt (nor should it!) to give an exhaustive list of all "BATH" words. —Angr 05:57, 3 June 2008 (UTC)
replies: text:  It's not a typical BATH word, as it has  in northern England as well as the south-east; it is actually included in a list of words like this in the "British accents" section of the article.--JHJ (talk) 07:54, 3 June 2008 (UTC)
replies: text:  Rather, half, calf, can't, and aunt.  Note that in the word rather, the "A" is not followed by either a voiceless fricative or a sequence of nasal+consonant.  I have never heard a British speaker say rather, can't, or half with .  Wells says that half with a short vowel is confined to Northumberland and Tyne and Wear. Jack(Lumber) 22:20, 3 June 2008 (UTC)
replies: text:  Don't forget the expression "If I had my 'druthers."  Kostaki mou (talk) 19:32, 27 June 2017 (UTC)

text:  I think banana is another one. —Angr 06:15, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
replies: text:  Yep.  Two or three centuries ago, whenever loanwords like banana entered the language BritEng would often map the low central vowel to .  USEng is inconsistent: banana has , lava has , pajama may have either, tomato is pronounced as it's spelled.  More recent loans, however, have  in BritEng (e.g. pasta), but consistent  in USEng--and the same goes for proper names like Nissan or Datsun.  Interestingly, Canadian English tends to have  in most such words; some Canadian speakers will even say , although this is a minority usage.  (We might argue that these tendencies are related at least in part to phonetic change, right?)  But there's more to it, of course; kebab entered the language in 1673, but it has  in Britain and  in the U.S.  And then there's khaki, or car key if you will... Jack(Lumber) 19:09, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Rather

message: I am really confused about the bad-lad split.  I thought the vowel in bad was always lengthened when compared to the vowel in bat; is it lengthened even more with this split?  I thought there was always a fortis vs. lenis distinction or voiceless vs. voiced distinction even in American English to some extent.  Why wouldn't lad also be lengthened compared to bat? Thegryseone (talk) 15:18, 20 May 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: The article doesn't say anything about the vowel of lad compared to that of bat; the point is just that in dialects with this split the vowel of lad is shorter than that of bad. It could still be longer than that of bat. (Though not necessarily - in Scottish English, there is no vowel lengthening before voiced stops as there is in American English and English English, see Scottish Vowel Length Rule. So maybe there is none in lad in Australian English either.) +Angr 15:49, 20 May 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: This looks dubious: "The word lad does in fact have a long /æː/ in most British accents affected by the split today; a more accurate name would be the bad-had split, with the latter retaining short /æ/ in the vast majority of these accents."  Proposing a "more accurate" name comes pretty close to original research.  (Also, for what it's worth, I have the bad-lad split in my accent and I do not pronounce "lad" with the long /æː/ of "bad" - but I guess that's OR too.) Lfh (talk) 21:35, 1 November 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: bad-lad part two

message: This is more of a dialectal survey than a phonological history. The title implies that you would find information on, for example, what happened to the Old English /æ/ in Middle English; everything discussed in this article is from the past two or three centuries. -Branddobbe (talk) 07:22, 21 June 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Mistitled?

message: Considering that this is an article with a lot to do with pronunciation, a few audio clips may be very helpful for those who are not very familiar with the IPA and such.Monkeyface13 (talk) 03:45, 17 October 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, someone was just asking about this on the lang ref desk but I had nothing to link to. μηδείς (talk) 21:04, 17 November 2012 (UTC)
thread_title: Audio Clips?

message: I have changed the name of the section from the capital digraph to the lower case IPA symbol, since IPA letters don't have capital forms.  But the question remains, should we hyphenate æ-tensing or not?  I slightly favor hyphenation, but what I really care about is consistency.  If anyone's got an opinion they should edit the article so the hyphenated or unhyphenated term is used consistently. μηδείς (talk) 21:03, 17 November 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  æ tensing or æ-tensing? 

message: This article sometimes uses the familiar terms 'short' and 'long' in relation to vowels, but at other times uses 'flat' and 'broad' apparently with the same meanings. I have never read any modern work of phonetics that uses the latter terms (except that 'flat' used to be used as a distinctive feature label with a completely different meaning). I would be glad of a reference to published work using 'flat' and 'broad' in a scientific way. If there isn't one, I would like to remove them from the article. Too often these terms crop up in ill-informed journalistic writing about local accents. RoachPeter (talk) 10:33, 10 October 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm pretty sure John Wells uses "broad" and "flat" informally in Accents of English, since "long" and "short" don't cover the difference in quality between /ɑː/ and /æ/, and constantly saying "the PALM vowel" and "the TRAP vowel" gets old quickly. Aɴɢʀ (talk) 10:40, 10 October 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: You are right. Wells' 'Accents of English' vol.1 p. 134 explains that 'broad' and 'flat' can be useful in certain contexts, though he warns against confusing their meaning with other widely-used senses of the words. Apologies for raising this. RoachPeter (talk) 12:02, 6 November 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Nothing to apologize for! It's certainly a point worth discussing. Aɴɢʀ (talk) 20:35, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

text: Also, in American schools, the terms "long a" and "short a" are typically used specifically to mean /eɪ/ and /æ/, respectively.  Thus, in order to avoid confusion from American readers, the terms "broad" and "flat" are used in the article.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.102.218.18 (talk) 21:56, 12 October 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Broad and flat 

message: "Broad /æð/ in blather, gather, slather"
That "broad" should be "flat", right? —JerryFriedman  (Talk) 19:10, 16 June 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: Yep. Angr (talk) 05:36, 17 June 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Broad" written for "flat"? 

message: In Cockney#Typical features, it is noted that the TRAP vowel /æ/ may be raised, resulting in [ɛ] (or [ɛɪ]), and surprisingly, Received Pronunciation#Historical variation notes that in RP, there used to be a similar tendency, even though the southeast, including Estuary English (often described as intermediate between RP and Cockney), preserves the [æ] realisation, and in the rest of England except East Anglia, it is even lowered to [a]. Is the raising of the TRAP vowel a southeastern innovation that was later pushed back again (say, in the course of the 20th century)? Also, is there any full-blown merger of the TRAP and DRESS vowels in any variety of English, at least for some positions (such as in Pat and pet), or is it generally avoided by raising or centralising the DRESS vowel too as in NZ English? I miss a discussion of the raising and any mergers like that here. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 15:07, 19 June 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: I've never heard of a variety of English that merges TRAP and DRESS. As far as I know, only foreigners do that, e.g. my German roommate who once mentioned Medicine, Wisconsin, and I didn't know what he was talking about. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 20:25, 19 June 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: I had a hunch, so I looked and offer you broad South African English, for one (under Afrikaans influence?), and that's a pretty major variety. Some more "exotic" varieties of English spoken in Asia, Africa, Oceania and the Caribbean (which you're less familiar with) may do the same – there are various semi-creolised varieties or true creoles such as Singlish which I don't know if they count, as Phonological history of English vowels does mention Malaysian and Singaporean English. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 00:52, 20 June 2014 (UTC)

text: See Open-mid front unrounded vowel#Occurrence and now again Phonological history of English high front vowels#Met–mat merger. (Special:WhatLinksHere/Zulu English set me on the right path.) --Florian Blaschke (talk) 01:33, 20 June 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: Actually, practically all Germans raise [æ] to [ɛ], with some very few intent on sounding British might think of lowering it to [a] (which then would be basically the same as the shut vowel, German-style pronounced). Even if some realize the difference, the two vowels are just too near to each other to actually make a difference when speaking. One other so hard sound is - no, not th; that is easy. Not w, that is easy too. What is hard is to pronounce jump in a manner any different from chump.--2001:A61:260D:6E01:E116:8772:EE65:4D70 (talk) 01:46, 18 December 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Raising towards [ɛ] 

message: I can't speak for the current situation of /æ/ in Boston, but I've not seen the the western "Metropolitan"what? region's /æ/ described as such in the table:
* Environment: /b/, /d/, /dʒ/,/ʃ/, /v/, /z/, /ʒ/ /f/, /s/, /θ/ and all other consonants = tense/lax [ɛə]~[æ]
Apart from what's already noted in California_English#Phonology, California has regularly shown to be a pure nasal split system with a shift of /æ/ before non nasal consonants in any environment, /r/ notwithstanding, to [a]
::E.g.: Grama, J., & Kennedy, R. (2009). Acoustic analysis of California vowels / Holland, Cory (2014). Shifting or Shifted The state of California vowels / Podesva, Robert J. et al (2013). The California Vowel Shift in a Rural Inland Community / Kennedy, R., & Grama, J. (2012). Chain shifting and centralization in California vowels: An acoustic analysis, etc...
Which puts it apart from Boston, never mind that Boston is an attested marry-merry-mary split area, opposed to the merged West, which should put them in separate columns for /r/. The /r/ row itself is also missing attested variations of the split/merger English-language_vowel_changes_before_historic_/r/#Mary.E2.80.93marry.E2.80.93merry_merger
As for Oregon/Washington aka Pacific_Northwest_English, they've been shown to back /æ/ as well, along with raising of /æ/ before /g/ 
::E.g.: Best,Katelyn et al 2013. Keep Portland weird Vowels in Oregon English / Conn, J. C. 2000. Portland Dialect Study: The Story of/æ/in Portland / Wassink, Alicia, et al. 2009. Effects of Gender and Style on Fronting and Raising of/æ/,/e:/, and/ε/before/g/in Seattle English / Wassink, A. B. 2011. Vowel reduction and merger in Pacific Northwest English / Freeman, Valerie 2014. Bag, Beg, Bagel: Prevelar Raising and Merger in Pacific Northwest English, etc...
There's really no reason for these simple inaccuracies to be here, especially next to the complicated systems of New York/Philadelphia/Baltimore being accurately presented  Traptraptrap (talk) 08:22, 5 December 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: It is not a split if there was never any historical splitting. Boston doesn't split merry, Mary and marry, the Midwest just merges them. Try not to give unwarranted weight or credence to speech errors like the merger in question, if you could. Tharthandorf Aquanashi (talk) 14:15, 5 December 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Metropolitan Western U.S." 

message: Nothing vastly better springs immediately to mind, but I'm not very happy with the title of this article. It seems to be largely about A's that might very well not be short in Modern English. W. P. Uzer (talk) 13:00, 9 October 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: How about Pronunciation of English ⟨a⟩ (on the pattern of Pronunciation of English ⟨th⟩ and Pronunciation of English ⟨wh⟩)? It still doesn't quite get the scope, but it's much closer, as well as being more user-friendly, and we can link to other articles that deal with other aspects of ⟨a⟩ pronunciations. W. P. Uzer (talk) 10:47, 20 October 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm going to change this then (probably without the angle brackets to begin with, since that requires admin powers). Any objectors please move it back and discuss - if it turns out there are none, then I'll ask for the angle brackets. W. P. Uzer (talk) 07:54, 14 November 2015 (UTC)
thread_title: Title

message: Note that I have made one change in the list section.  Previously, it said, "In some dialects, though, including the New York and Mid-Atlantic ones (such as spoken in Philadelphia), the "short a" sound can actually split into two entirely distinct phonemes, so that using a tense vowel rather than a lax vowel can potentially change the meanings of words or phrases."  Note that this is actually inaccurate for New York English.  I live in Central Jersey.  And at least around here, there is a split between /eə/ and /æ/.  However, no minimal pairs are formed in the split.  Furthermore, when I have spoken to people New York accents, there were never any confusions between words like caf (meaning cafeteria) and calf.
On the other hand, which could be the cause of the confusion, when the short a proceeds /f/, /θ/ to a lesser extent, or /s/, it could be pronounced either way, even in the same sentence.
I'll use the following sentence as an example: "A half of a mile is a half of a mile."  This could be pronounced as any of these: 
* /ə hæf əv ə maɪˈəl ɪz ə hæf əv ə maɪˈəl/,
* /ə heəf əv ə maɪˈəl ɪz ə hæf əv ə maɪˈəl/,
* /ə hæf əv ə maɪˈəl ɪz ə heəf əv ə maɪˈəl/,
* or /ə heəf əv ə maɪˈəl ɪz ə heəf əv ə maɪˈəl/.
Personally, I feel that this is more phenomenal, and that it is interesting; but it might just be me.  Over and out.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.102.218.18 (talk) 22:34, 12 October 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: The NYC system is a phonemic split in the classic sense; the fact that no misunderstandings were created in communication between someone who doesn't have the split and someone who does doesn't prove that it's not a split. However, the NYC system is highly sociolinguistically stigmatized, and speakers can vary between using and avoiding the split system. That doesn't mean that the NYC system doesn't contain a phonemic split, just that people don't always use the NYC system. AJD (talk) 18:32, 15 October 2016 (UTC)

text: The classic definition of a phonemic split is: a sound change such that what was originally one sound (e.g., [æ]) becomes two (e.g., [æ] and [eə]), in such a way that it is not possible to determine simply from phonetic context which sound appears in which words. The variability of the NYC system complicates this a bit, but only insofar as speakers vary in terms of whether they use the NYC system or not; it doesn't affect the phonemic status of sounds within in NYC system itself. AJD (talk) 20:38, 1 November 2016 (UTC)

text: I mean, I don't really accept your thesis that can is "usually" pronounced [kɛn] in NY English, at least according to the sociolinguistic literature. Anyway, it's hard to find a good example of a minimal pair other than that (especially since I don't know as much about the NYC system as I do about the Philadelphia system), but something like banner 'flag' vs. banner 'someone who bans something' would probably do it. AJD (talk) 10:31, 2 November 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Distinction between phonemic and non-phonemic /æ/ tensing 

message: In the section describing the vowel changes before r, the pages says that  was lengthened before r, shifting to .  Then, the page jumps right to describing the words cat and cart differing by vowel quality and length in Received Pronunciation, the former pronounced as  and the latter as , without ever mentioning the retracting of  to .  (The fronting of  to  is described.)  Could anybody add in a line saying when  was retracted to ?  Thank you.LakeKayak (talk) 22:37, 14 December 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  a before r 

message: I personally think these should have their own articles. They are long and significant enough for articles on their own. Have all the information about them here makes the article lengthy. I have created articles for them. Fish567 (talk) 23:15, 30 January 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: I feel there should be some time before the sections on this page are reduced.  However, I have no objection to either split.LakeKayak (talk) 23:25, 30 January 2017 (UTC)
replies: text:  As the page /æ/ tensing has stood for a few months, now I have condensed the section on this page.  I can let somebody else be the judge on Trap–bath split.  I don't know the topic well enough.LakeKayak (talk) 01:22, 28 March 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  trap-bath split and ae tensing 

message: This one I am only a little curious about.  And I want to see if anybody knows the answer – because I don't.  Any help with this question is appreciated.LakeKayak (talk) 01:03, 4 May 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  What is the origin of the terms "broad a" and "flat a"?