Re: The [a:] sound
Saul Epstein 
Thu, 12 Mar 1998 21:46:40 -0600

Quotes from: Dr Maggie Hellstrom, Lund
Date: Thursday, March 12, 1998 1:14 PM
 
> Saul, when commenting on a pronounciation question from Sorik,
wrote:
> > ... We're pretty sure that [a:] is as in German "Bach," and
StandAmEng
> > "stop."
> 
> This statement confuses me, because to me, the vowel sounds in
those
> two example words are not the same. Similar, but not the same. The
German
> word/name is to my ears pronounced (by the native German speakers,
at least) 
> with a slightly shorter sound than the AmEng "stop". I think the
root to the
> "problem" is that native English speakers tend to mispronounce the
vowel 
> sounds in German by making them slightly longer and also altering
the pitch
> (if that's the right expression - I'm really a beginner in this
field!).

By "long" and "short," if you're referring to the duration of the
sound over time, you may be entirely correct. And, of course, all of
these equivalences are approximate. The vowels that any one person
makes in the course of a day hover around positions staked out by her
dialect's phonemes. But I was referring to the position of the tongue
in the mouth. The fact that distinctions between these positions are
sometimes referred to in terms of length (and that our source does so
both implicitly and explicitly) is an unfortunate bit of phonetic
vestigialism. In my opinion, anyway.

The High German <a> in a stressed syllable is, broadly speaking, a
low, back, unrounded vowel. As is the vowel in my pronunciation of
English "stop." And, being a suburban Plains/Midwesterner, I tend to
evaluate my own "formal" pronunciations as pretty solidly within the
range of SAE.

> Of course, the day someone is brave enough to record some sample
sound files
> illustrating pronounciation etc, the situation will hopefully
become clearer
> (and then we can just decide to stick with the outcome of that...)

Such a project is in the planning stage, actually...

--
from Saul Epstein
locus*planetkc,com
www <dot> jccc <dot> net <slash> <tilde> sepstein
"Surak ow'phaaper thes'hi thes'tca'; thes'phaadjar thes'hi
	suraketca'."
							-- K'dvarin Urswhl'at