GalacticCactus Forum
Forums => English & Linguistics => Topic started by: Jonathon on March 04, 2008, 07:07:56 PM
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On another forum, some people were talking about various pronunciations and phonetic transcriptions of the word button. Someone posted a bunch of sound clips, and I was wondering how accurate my transcriptions were.
Here's my post from over there, with links to the sound clips:
1. [b??n] (http://www.sakeriver.com/misc/button1.wav) It sounds like a syllabic [n] here, but it could vary with [?n].
2. [b?t??n] (http://www.sakeriver.com/misc/button2.wav) 2a (http://www.sakeriver.com/misc/button2a.wav) might have a long vowel in the first syllable, and it also sounds like you might be stressing the second vowel and making it [?] instead of [?]. It's hard to tell.
3. [b??n] (http://www.sakeriver.com/misc/button3.wav) I think I'd do a syllabic [n] here again.
4. [b???n] (http://www.sakeriver.com/misc/button4.wav) This definitely sounds like [?] and not [?], contrary to what I said in response to your earlier description.
4a. [b???n] (http://www.sakeriver.com/misc/button4a.wav) This looks right to me too.
I figured that since you used to be a phonetician, you'd be a better person to ask about this.
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I'd pretty much agree with you.
the vowels in 2a sound slightly different to me quality-wise, the second vowel sounds higher, but not as high as the second vowel in 2.
I think 4a. is [b???n].
If I had some spectrographic software I'd check all these out.
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Thanks. That's good to know. I waffled on 4a, but I can definitely see it being a wedge. And now that I listen to it again, it does sound like it's the same vowel in both syllables.