Tag Archives: phonetics

“Fillum” in England

Posted on February 26, 2015 by Ben

Two commenters recently pointed out that fillum (i.e. fɪləm), a quintessentially Irish pronunciation of film, can also be heard in England. Many assume fillum‘s origins to be Irish–along with similar pronunciations of words like helm (“hellum”)–because in certain contexts the Irish language inserts … Continue reading →

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Posted in Irish English | Tagged | 6 Comments

Australian Broad-A

Posted on June 15, 2014 by Ben

Speaking of Shane Jenek/Courtney Act (the Australian drag queen that served as the topic of my last post), I noticed that he uses a “short-a” in words like dance, France, and demand. That is, Jenek pronounces “dance” with the same vowel as … Continue reading →

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Posted in Australian English | Tagged , | 25 Comments

“Courtney Act” and Non-Rhotic Puns

Posted on May 27, 2014 by Ben

This season of RuPaul’s Drag Race featured Courtney Act (aka Shane Jenek), a renowned drag performer from Brisbane, Australia. In an early episode, Act/Jenek laments that Americans don’t get the pun in his stage name, which sounds similar to “caught in … Continue reading →

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Posted in Australian English | Tagged , , , | 16 Comments

Reformed Views on Spelling Reform

Posted on April 10, 2014 by Ben

Back in college, I obsessed over English spelling reform. Why deal with silent gh’s, I figured, when things can be so much cleaner? So I started inventing phonetically-precise alphabets, ending up with results like this: Tu bii or not tu … Continue reading →

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Posted in Miscellaneous Accents and Dialects | Tagged , | 31 Comments

New Mexican Spanish

Posted on March 8, 2014 by Ben

Wikipedia has many excellent entries on regional dialects. I’m wary of taking all its information at face value, but the site provides good links to relevant sociolinguistics texts that would be tricky for laypeople to track down otherwise. That being … Continue reading →

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Posted in Miscellaneous Accents and Dialects | Tagged , | 16 Comments

Henry Higgins, Language Snob

Posted on March 3, 2014 by Ben

The classic musical My Fair Lady is on TV right now, and I am puzzling over Henry Higgins (I have shared my thoughts about the character before). If he obsesses over dialects so much, why does he hate non-standard English? Lerner and Loewe … Continue reading →

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Posted in British English | Tagged , | 3 Comments

Sick Speech

Posted on December 12, 2013 by Ben

I had tonsillitis last week. Throat maladies tend to endow one with a strange temporary “accent,” and this one was no different; the illness rendered my voice unusually nasal in this case. Such an affliction contrasts with typical head cold … Continue reading →

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Posted in English Phonetics | Tagged | 3 Comments

More on Dictionary Pronunciations

Posted on November 16, 2013 by Ben

As per my last post on “dictionary standards,” here’s an actual editor’s thoughts on dictionary pronunciation guidelines: Good dictionaries leave room for change. Take, for example, a word like “comfortable.” In a pronunciation guide from the early 1960s, the word is … Continue reading →

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Posted in American English | Tagged | 21 Comments

Vowel Shifts in English and Dutch

Posted on October 11, 2013 by Ben

As I recently discussed, English shares its penchant for r-variability with other languages. This got me thinking about another dialect marker common to English and other tongues, namely what might be called the “close diphthongs.” These are vowels typically found … Continue reading →

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Posted in English Phonetics | Tagged , , , | 19 Comments

It’s Not Just English with the “R” Thing

Posted on September 9, 2013 by Ben

I talk about “r” a lot here*. Seriously, if you take a look at this site’s analytics, you’ll find that the Google query that brings the most traffic is simply “r.” The consonant is one of the most important ways … Continue reading →

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Posted in Miscellaneous Accents and Dialects | Tagged | 17 Comments