2 ms·

I don't have to remember. I have recordings. Things like 'r' are a bit of a puzzle. What determines when a letter is silent? I don't actually believe pronunciat

by psyc 10y ago

I don't have to remember. I have recordings. Things like 'r' are a bit of a puzzle. What determines when a letter is silent? I don't actually believe pronunciation is absolute or fixed in time. But I don't believe its perfectly relative, either, or that "standard" does not have a meaning. Most accents sound like vowel sounds aliasing as other vowel sounds. I think the standard accent just doesn't alias nearly as much among all the vowel sounds, and I think that's meaningful.

foldr 10y ago
>What determines when a letter is silent? I don't actually believe pronunciation is absolute or fixed in time Not sure what you mean here. There are rhotic dialects which lack a rule of 'r' deletion and non-rhotic dialects which don't. It has nothing to do with letters. It has to do with the presence or absence of a particular phonological rule. The relevant feature most certainly is fixed in time, in the sense that speakers of non-rhotic dialects consistently delete /r/ phonemes following a vowel whereas speakers of rhotic dialects do not. >I think the standard accent just doesn't alias nearly as much among all the vowel sounds, and I think that's meaningful. This is simply false. There are non-standard dialects that make more distinctions between vowels than standard dialects.