Talk:Open front unrounded vowel

message: There is no guarantee that a will have an "umbrella" (not sure what the typographic term for the thing covering the top of the lowercase-a is called.) Isn't there an actual Unicode entity number for this "a" which doesn't depend on the default font? --James S. 17:28, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  #97 can't be the right entity code 

message: What's with all the ä's? Shouldn't an IPA article contain stanrd IPA characters? 惑乱 分からん 10:30, 10 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Granted, it's central. Sorry. 惑乱 分からん 11:20, 10 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  ä? 

message: I changed "no language distinguishes" to "few languages distinguish" since my own dialect of Vietnamese actually distinguishes between these two. The absolute "no languag distinguishes" claim is uncited and, even in the absence of my counterevidence, impossible to prove.
18.238.6.5 20:32, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I think a better way of addressing the uncited nature of this information is to put  after it.  Altering the wording to fit a different understanding is not removing uncited material.  Æµ§œš¹ [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi] 21:16, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The bigger issue at hand was not that it was uncited, but that it was *wrong* (as well as invited). Absolute statements usually are wrong, no matter what they are about, and making an absolute statement non-absolute IMO is *almost* ;) always warranted, in addition to whatever other remedies may be called for Firejuggler86 (talk) 18:27, 22 May 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Distinguishing open and central low vowels 

message: The English examples need to be revamped.  At least in some of Canadian, Northern, Scottish, Jamaican, and Irish English, the "ash" may actually vary from  to ; in ScotE, it's often if not usually centralized; in IrE, CanE and NorthEngE, it may also be  or ; and many (if not most) General American speakers (at least those without the cot-caught merger) realize the LOT vowel as a central . Jack(Lumber) 16:11, 27 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree with you Jack, but it's hard to show all of that on the table.  I also think that California could be added to the table although the vowel shift  there isn't near as widespread as, say, the Northern Cities Vowel Shift. 208.104.45.20 (talk) 19:44, 27 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: The California shift is also way more recent than the NCS, and it's not clear if it will become the dominant pattern or if it's just a Valley Girl thing.  In Labov's ANAE (which makes no mention of the California shift), a speaker from Nevada has a Canadian-like ash (but no Canadian shift).  There's no reason why the speech of Nevada should be any different than that of California--assuming that such a thing as a California dialect exists.  And, to answer one of your earlier questions, if you find yourself fronting the cot/caught vowel at times, well, that's a good reason not to realize  as ... Jack(Lumber) 15:33, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

text: Dialects don't care about state boundaries, but there are other things that separate most Californians and Nevadans from one another..mountain ranges and deserts and the like..but I am sure that residents of South Lake Tahoe CA and Stateline NV likely speak the same dialect
Firejuggler86 (talk) 01:07, 22 May 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  English 

message: According to this article by Corrine McCarthy,  =  is not in low-front position, but low-central position in Chicago. Thegryseone (talk) 02:37, 30 June 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: So we should put dots above the a? — Æµ§œš¹ [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi] 07:31, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

text: Neither are Canadian, Irish, or Scottish, but I think that pointing out such differences would be beyond the scope of this page, which is supposed to demonstrate the occurrence of the vowel in particular languages/dialects, regardless of the fact that some or many speakers may actually use another vowel.  In the Inland North, the LOT vowel may be anywhere between  and  (someone may even have ); IPA symbols are just reference points, like mile markers on a highway.  By the way,  =  can be considered "General American," at least if you don't have the cot-caught merger. Jack(Lumber) 13:54, 3 July 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Chicago

message: this sound doesn't exist in english besides in the long sound of i (aI), therefore this sound should be removed. Also some spanish and portuguese information would suit well to the moderator, right? 190.148.195.143 (talk) 05:23, 26 January 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: It depends on dialect.  A number of them do have this very vowel as a monophthong, though General American and Received Pronunciation do not.  What do you mean by "moderator"? — Æµ§œš¹ [aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi] 12:51, 26 January 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  big error 

message: I've added "pasta" for American English.  In American English, the first "a" in "pasta" is pronounced as /a/.  In Canadian English and some other dialects they say the first "a" as /æ/ (such that it has the same sound as the "a" in "dad." -Helvetica (talk) 09:49, 11 February 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: In General American, it's much more back.  We already have listed examples of where it's not and we have GA listed at open back unrounded vowel. — Æµ§œš¹ [aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi] 13:02, 11 February 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  American English 

message: I propose adding 나 (na) to the example table.  65.222.236.25 (talk) 17:50, 9 July 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: According to Korean phonology, it's an open central vowel.  — Æµ§œš¹ [ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ] 20:25, 9 July 2012 (UTC)
thread_title: Korean

message: Could French be added? It has it:
http://fr.wiktionary.org/wiki/Annexe:Prononciation/fran%C3%A7ais Israell (talk) 03:07, 3 April 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: Neither Wiktionary nor Wikipedia are reliable sources. Fortunately, I have one (or two, we'll see). I'll add French ASAP. Peter238 (talk) 03:10, 3 April 2015 (UTC)

text: Done. Peter238 (talk) 04:20, 3 April 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  French 

message: In the introduction, there is an interesting reference to a blog post by Geoff Lindsey, whose depiction of  deviates from the canonical IPA vowel chart and has here been characterized as an "extra-open central unrounded vowel". I can understand why you might want to call it "extra-open" in this context (though it is basically the same sound that has traditionally been classified as the open front unrounded vowel). However, I'm afraid it may be a little misleading to call it "central", as Lindsey does not actually classify it as a central vowel on the customary front/back scale. What he does say is that "a is located centrally, below schwa" on his modified vowel chart, but it is also aligned with front vowels and back vowels. Therefore, I feel that characterizing it simply as central does not do justice to Lindsey's analysis.
As far as I can see, Lindsey's point is that although  has traditionally been classified as a front vowel, it is a matter of perspective whether you regard it as front or central, or even as back. As Lindsey puts it: "The front/back ambiguity of a could be enshrined explicitly by the addition of a connecting line to the 'back' series." If you classify the "extra-open unrounded vowel" as central, the implication is that there are distinct front and back variants, which according to Lindsey is not the case. – Simo Kaupinmäki (talk) 12:30, 19 October 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, you're correct. However, the formants define it as central (it has the F1 value of central vowels) and if we just call it an "extra-open vowel", that would seem to be analogous to a "high vowel" or "mid vowel" -- i.e., that there may be several extra-open vowels differentiated by backness. Can you think of a wording that would capture both the fact that there is no diffentiation and that by F1, which defines backness, it is central, without actually calling it "central"? — kwami (talk) 19:13, 19 October 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Extra-open" unrounded vowel 

message: The sound sample seems to be wrong. It sounds like /ä/, not /a/. 2A02:1205:C6A9:FC40:F0B0:A830:4F22:2EEC (talk) 20:37, 15 January 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Sound sample 

message: I just copy my edit summary here regarding the RP /a/. The source makes disctincion between Conservative RP, Mainstream RP, and Contemporary RP, classifying /ae/ as Conservative, and about /a/ says only: "Younger RP speakers generally use an <a> sound, a rare example of RP speech moving closer to northern English pronunciation." Therefore, we cannot say that /a/ is RP in general. I think this RP /a/ should be removed from the list for he time being unless a more specific source is found, and the distinctions between several "types" of RP are adressed. WikiHannibal (talk) 16:33, 17 October 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm a native RP speaker (born and raised in a small town in Surrey in the mid 1990s). My mother (also born in Surrey, in the 1960s) and myself and virtually every single person I have ever met uses the vowel in this article /a/ (?) rather than the other vowel /ae/, which I imagine could be heard in the speech of some of the very elderly, possibly you would have to go back to old television/radio recordings. I think this sound change in RP is essentially complete, or will be very soon, and so I don't think it is a good idea for you to remove this RP /a/ as virtually every RP user who reads this article will be using /a/ and anyone who wants to learn RP or learn anything about it will be interested to know that this vowel is used in RP. 84.215.97.119 (talk) 01:26, 16 December 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: Agreed, and it should also be noted that in the *context* of the statement quoted by the OP, "younger speakers" means younger than Lady Silvia, and was noting generally that use of /ae/ rather than /a/ has become a distinctly *Conservative* RP trait. Taken as a whole, we can logically infer that /a/ has become the vowell that "general" RP uses, and there is not really any dubiousness... Firejuggler86 (talk) 00:59, 22 May 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  RP /a/ vs /ae/ 

message: This article provides no help whatsoever in distinguishing /a/ vs /a:/. Seems like a real oversight! Peter G Werner (talk) 14:48, 11 March 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: Find yourself a teacher of phonetics for that. The vowel length symbol doesn't even mean the same in every language. In English, the alleged 'long monophthongs'  are more clipped than  before fortis/voiceless consonants and in that way resemble the diphthongs (which they are in contemporary RP: ). So  are just wrong for (RP) English, and even more wrong for Australian English (I'll never understand the choice of  for AuE). In German and Swedish, there is no such distinction and they retain their length regardless of the type of consonant that follows (at least in primarily stressed syllables). Sol505000 (talk) 07:50, 24 June 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  /a/ vs /a:/?