On Mon, 2002-06-24 at 23:16, Adrian Morgan wrote:
> Tristan McLeay wrote, quoting myself:

> > I have no idea whether Australian English has [a] or [A], I think it's
> > actually in between the two, the first vowel of the diphthong /ai/ is
> > different from the sound of 'car'. This is irrelevant at the moment,
> > though.
>
> I can't hear a difference.

Maybe you have none.

> > Yup, [h8u-li] sounds RP to me all right. Well, [h@u...] would sound RP,
> > but [h8u-li] would sound like a mock-RP by an Aussie.
>
> [Incidentally we see here an example of what happens when an expression
> containing '@' appears in Yahoo Groups - it gets followed by "...".
> I'm reading via Yahoo Groups and copying/pasting/replying via email.]

Ooh, yucky. I imagine you worked out what it was. I'll attempt to
remember this in future conversations with you.

> These differences between Australian dialects are interesting. I have
> a half-baked idea to write a page of notes on them for my website.

Sounds interesting if you ever get around to it.

> I'm not surprised that your "holy" is different from mine since both
> are common, but I am surprised that you seem unfamiliar with [h*u-li].

Maybe I'm not listening carefully enough...

> > > [oo in school]
> > > For me it's "higher" in the terminology you used previously, i.e. the
> > > jaws are a little more closed. If you transcribe "wool" as [wul] then
> > > I might transcribe "school" as, I suppose, [skw=:l].
> >
> > I think you cannot get a vowel higher than [u]. If you can, the vowel is
> > generally transcribed as [U]
>
> Oops, did I get "higher" and "lower" mixed up? I don't find that
> terminology very descriptive, I'm afraid. All I mean to say is that
> the jaws are a little more closed for "fool" than they are for "foot".
>
> [A] is very low while [u] is very high - Is this correct?

Yes, that's right.

> > With 'wool', there's the added complexity of a diphthong: there's a
> > schwa inserted between the /w/ and the /u/ (or else the /u/ is
> > pronounced as a (potentially rounded) [@]).
>
> There isn't for me. Definitely [wul] with the same vowel as in "put".

That sounds like a feat to pronounce.

> > However, I would say that 'full' and 'fool' were, indeed, distinguished
> > purely by length. I don't think I can get a higher vowel than the one
> > in there, so that's probably [u].
>
> [u] equals [w=] (syllabic [w]). This is one thing I'm very confident
> on, as I've been told so directly. So "fool" for me is [fu:l].

Okay, I'm happy with that.

> The vowel in "foot" is slightly more open (lower, I think).

That tends to be the normal vowel there, I think, and would be [U].

> > The vowel in 'boot' is more fronted (and long), but I wouldn't say
> > it was diphthongal.
>
> Agreed. I don't know of any dialects where it's diphthogonal.

People tend to claim the Australian /u:/ is pronounced more like [@u:].

Tristan.