Why do Some People Pronounce 'Off' as 'Awf'? | The LOT-CLOTH and TRAP-BATH Splits
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- čas přidán 7. 03. 2023
- Dr. Geoff Lindsey's video on the IPA symbols used to transcribe modern British English, and where their arrangement is outdated: • Why these English phon...
An article by John Booth on how outdated IPA symbols still dominate the teaching of British English to second-language speakers: www.cambridge.org/core/journa...
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Thumbs up for the birds!
may the Overbird look favourably upon you
I'm team birds / any nature shots. Helps me think.
Keep the birds!
R u mad?
I grew up with English sparrows and so I’ve always thought of them as proper American birds. Now, how do I get out of this nest?
I personally really like the B-roll of nature that you include between the slides. It's not only a characteristically Simon Roper thing, I feel like I can process what's been said better this way. And obviously the birds are visually extremely cool.
really great video! one note about US accents: we actually have two types of TRAP/BATH splits here. the traditional boston accent has an RP-like TRAP/BATH split, with TRAP with /æ/ and BATH with /ɑː/. john f kennedy (from boston) pronounced "half" with /ɑː/ but "have" with /æ/, for example. the other TRAP/BATH split is the traditional new york city accent (and with modifications, the philadelphia accent), in which TRAP again takes /æ/ but BATH lengthens and raises and diphthongizes rather than backing, to /ɛə/, merging with the MARY vowel in those accents. as such, the NYC version of the TRAP/BATH split (which is still going strong!) is a perfect front-vowel copy of the LOT/CLOTH split (which they also have), since again in that case CLOTH raises and diphthongizes.
I'm from New York, and I'd say our pronunciation of these words is cot=[kʰät], caught=[kʰoət], trap=[tɹæp], and bath=[beəθ]. We have the "trap-bath" split but the split also extends to words with voiced stops and the /ʃ/ sound. Our "Palm" vowel can also be distinct from "lot," "palm" being something like [pʰɒəm] though certain "lot" words use the "palm" vowel and foreign words like "Bach" are pronounced with the lot vowel and not the "palm" vowel, so "Bach's box" is pronounced the same.
I grew up in northern New Jersey and had a fairly NYC-influenced accent-that "aw" diphthong in abundance. (As I've mentioned elsewhere here, it's also stronger in my generation than my parents'.) I moved to Seattle a few years ago and largely lost my native accent. The vowels are all much flatter here, which is fine with me, but now it's incredibly hard for me to switch back to a NJ/NYC accent, partly because the "aw" sound now feels cartoonish to me, like it no longer makes sense coming out of my mouth.
The accent sounds fine to me when I hear it from other people, but I can understand now when other people think it's kind of ridiculous.
Saying that, I had a teacher from France who LOVES New York accents, so there are fans out there.
It sounds cartoonish to others around the country?? 😭
I once got told by a New Zealander that my "dog" sounds like a cross between "door" and "hog" 😭
@@RadioactiveEggplant Well, I've heard it made fun of, yeah. Saying that, I've also known a bunch of people here in Seattle who really like NYC accents--some of them even have told me that they wished I still had mine. Maybe New York is just far away enough that the accent is seen as kind of exotic or cool?
@@kyokokirigiri100 I referred to it as NYC-influenced partly because it's noticeably closer to a NYC accent than people in my parents' and grandparents' generation have. I would guess that happened because 1. most of the media comes from New York, and 2. more people from New York have moved into NJ.
Fwiw, I can still hear differences between some of the areas you mentioned, but it's true that they aren't nearly as significant as they used to be. They're still noticeable enough that I have preferences amongst them, but I'll politely not post those here, lol. (I like Queen accents, so you're safe. :) )
Same thing for me. I don't feel cartoonish but after 30 years elsewhere I think my mouth and mind try to do something else and there are words I, (now at 50 years old), stumble over as they are coming out. I guess it's because I am finally unconciously aware of it (idk)? Hard to explain but some that come to mind are hawk and caulk. I say it with that hard "aww" sound but people where I am would pronounce them as "hock" and "cock". There have been times when at fist I didn't really understand what was being talked about becuase of it and now they can be hard to get out- I think because I am trying to make sure people know what I'm saying. I am positive if I moved back to NY that would go away immediately and I'd probably fall into the heavy accent I never thought I had.
@@kyokokirigiri100 I'm from Westchester and even growing up I never thought I had or heard an accent even though we were 30 minutes from the city. Now I can sure hear it when I speak to old friends. I also worked a job recently that was a national company and I would laugh b/c I was usually right when I spoke to a client and could guess if they were from LI, Westchester, Brooklyn, etc. There is quite a distinction. It might be tiny and not percepible to someone not from NY but I was amazed how often I was correct when I asked or saw their address. That might be disappearing as people move around so much but I think there are tiny diffrences for sure.
Bernie Sanders is from Brooklyn, New York. When I first worked for him in Vermont, his accent was very strong and very "foreign." He sounds less like a New Yorker now, but he certainly doesn't have a Vermont accent. It's just become more "standard."
As an Irish person I've always been conscious of the trap-bath split amongst southern English people, even as a child, though obviously at the time I didn't have a name for it. I never liked it because to me it epitomised the ‘posh English accent’ (just like northerners in England as pointed out in the video), even more so than non-rhoticity which I really wasn't as aware of. When I finally was able to put a name to the phenomenon, after starting casually learning about phonetics, I remember thinking, ‘oh yes, the trap-bath split, thank God I don't have *that*!’
Turns out I do have it, as do most Irish people. We just have very similar vowel qualities (/a/ vs /aː/) that aren't a stark difference like in British English. Oops lol.
Yes, it's very peculiar, especially in the north east US and Canada with those of us that have mixed English, Irish, Scottish, and Ulster ancestry. You get these weird mixed dialectic sentences with pop words. For example, I had an Irish uncle up in Kingston who would pronounce words with different inflections in the same sentence because his mom and dad were from different parts of the isle. Even my one first uncle will speak clear American until he says words like battery; which says, "bat-tree" in an American accent.
@@AcidDeathRitual One thing that I’ve noticed is that the pronunciation of the word ‘battery’ changes significantly from Birmingham to Coventry and South Warwickshire. In Birmingham it’s ALWAYS ‘bat-tree’ but in Coventry it’s ALWAYS ‘ba’ery’ like in the South. Also ‘cinema’ is ALWAYS ‘sin-uh-muh’ in Birmingham but ‘sin-uh-mah’ or even ‘sin-uh-maa’ (with a long ‘a’ rather than long ‘o’ sound) in Coventry!
Growing up in southern England I never had that association, since everyone of all social classes has the trap-bath split there (as Simon mentions in the video).
However, since moving to the north I have been told many times by native northerners that my voice sounds "posh", and I think having the trap-bath split is the reason why.
I worked with a woman from the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia and she pronounced "Don" (as in the nickname for Donald) as "Dawn" (the cot-caught merger but merged to caught rather than the normal cot). For weeks I thought there was some mythical woman named Dawn whom I hadn't met yet for some reason.
how do you pronounce those two? i pronounce them the same
I am from the Philly region and had the opposite experience. My coworker merges Don and Dawn, pronouncing them both as Don to my ears. Our boss was named Dawn, and it took me a while to realize that there was no Don around.
@@scottmiller7771 yeah, I think most Americans not in the Northeast merge caught into cot. She’s one of a handful of people doing the reverse
I'm in PNW, and Don and Dawn have the same sound in my voice.
@@gjgsssgjgsss I’m from the Philly area, so I don’t have the cot caught merger. cot has /ɑ/ and caught is /ɔ/
not 100% sure in terms of narrow transcription but something like = [kʰɑt] and = [kʰɔət]
Btw, in New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore trap and bath are split, the former as you pronounced it /æ/, and the latter is raised to /ɛə/. Wikipedia has a good article on the short-a raising
This is the first time I've ever heard anyone acknowledge the existence of this vowel -- as a Philadelphian, I feel vindicated. 🙂
My suspicion is that these cities inherited earlier, higher/fronter realizations of the bath vowel. I know that one German visitor to London in the 18th century said that refined ladies pronounced "nasty" as a German would write "nehsti", rather than "nahsti" as one might write it now, and that other East Coast cities had similar a-tensing systems that have since been flattened out to a generic nasal system.
That’s an unrelated split occurring to the same vowel, called /æ/-raising. This may happen without splitting into 2 phonemes, but in Philadelphia, for example, “Chelsea Manning” and “Manning the vehicle” have different vowels.
@@cmyk8964 It's not an unrelated split. It is very likely that NYC/Philadelphia/Baltimore-style /æ/-tensing systems are developments of the same lengthening that resulted in the bath-trap split. Many discussions of the split understand it this way, and there are good reasons for doing so. The core environments (f, s, θ) are the same, and both splits have an open-syllable constraint. There were different variants of the lengthened vowel in different dialects of southern England. These East Coast cities must have inherited fronter variants and then diphthongized them to [ɛə ~ eə], similarly to how the THOUGHT-CLOTH broad vowel diphthongized to [ɔə ~ oə] in many accents.
Although the trap-bath split tends to connote the BATH vowel being pronounced like the START or PALM vowels, like ''glasses'' being pronounced as ''glarses''\''glahsses'', ''dance'' becoming ''darnce''\''dahnce'', ''ask'' as ''arsk'', etc.
I remember my mother and her siblings having an argument over whether the names Don and Dawn were pronounced the same. My mother and one aunt don't have the merger, and pronounce them differently, but I and some of my aunts and uncles have the merger. They all grew up in southern Maine together, as did I about 30 years later.
I like the birds. At first I thought, "ugh, house sparrows", but then remembered that they're native in the UK.
If you ever visit Philadelphia, you will have your mind blown. We don't fit into any of these groups -- even the eastern urban US one -- and we constantly do things in ways that make linguistics professors rip their hair out. (I wish I could record myself saying them and send it to you.) Even the classic "Mary/merry/marry/Murray" question doesn't work for us. "Which ones rhyme for you?" Um, none of them ...
John McWorter opened my eyes to the Philadelphia accent. He can suppress it of course l but I watched a whole episode of one of his Great Courses whairr (heh) he goes into the Philly vowels. Quite the eye opener!
@@dukeon McWhorter is fascinating and a very interesting thinker in general -- listening to him ruminate is always worthwhile.
Simon, please restore the Baldrick videos. Even if the old English was off, they were still very entertaining!
I clicked this video so fast as a New Yorker. Clawth, Dawg, Awfn, gawn, kawfee. Best way of talking :)
Also gonna throw out that Boston doesn't do this since Boston has the cot-caught merger. Philly, Baltimore, Rhode Island, AAVE, Inland North/Great Lakes/Chicago, and more rural southern speech do.
@@RadioactiveEggplant i do believe i "off" and "awf" the same and "cot" and "caught" the same. winnipeg accent
When in New York...
Otherwise, you will be mistaken for mocking the poor Americans
Yeah but I don't think he quite gets bath right.
@@RadioactiveEggplant from Northwest Ohio, I can confirm that I pronounce these words the same.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe that most American accents without the cot-caught merger do have the lot-cloth split. I’m pretty sure Luke Ranieri does. I think the stereotype about those urban East Coast accents is, in fact, their raised THOUGHT-vowel, which, in broad New York City accents, is merged with NORTH and FORCE.
Also, he pronounces and transcribes the East Coast Accents as having a slightly more rounded LOT-vowel, when if their LOT-vowel's at all different from the first accent, (I think) they'd normally have a slightly more fronted vowel (though things are different in traditional Boston and New York accents.)
I grew up with that kind of accent, and "thought" definitely had a strong "aw." I'm sure it depends on the area, though.
Edit: I meant that my accent was NYC-ish.
I live in SoCal myself and here we pronounce cot and caught with the same vowel as well as lot and cloth. They all sound the same to me and I thought that was the General American Standard, but maybe the lot-cloth-cot-caught vowels merging is just a west coast thing? I wonder where Luke Ranieri is from because to me he sounds very General Standard American like my accent, but maybe I’ve never noticed his lot-cloth split.
US midwesterner here, don't have the cot-caught merger, do have the lot-cloth split.
I'm from Maryland and say thought with an aw sound.
From Philly, lot is slightly lower than cot, cloth and caught have the same vowel, though the diphthong is much more subtle
Wow ok you pull off a decent Modern American accent, sir 🎉🎉🎉It’s very much how we sound here on the west coast of the US.
I love the birds! I love that you love animals. I do too. I live in CT and a lot of us have speech that is influenced by Boston and New York City accents. I tend to pronounce words differently than most people in CT. I tend to have a more Boston accent. I'm not sure why. I have no familiar ties there and didn't live there. I must have picked it up somehow. I love hearing different accents. It's such a beautiful thing. I love these videos that you do illustrating the differences.
I think the difference falls along the line where as you move east, people stop wearing Yankees caps and start wearing Red Sox caps
@Adam R It's a 50/50 mixture here in CT. It's kind of a big deal here. People are either Red Sox or Yankees fans. If you're a fan of one, you hate the other. And for football It's either the Giants or the Patriots. CT is definitely very heavily influenced by both Boston and NYC.
@@riley02192012 I know, I'm from Westchester and my cousins in Hartford grew up as Red Sox fans
I originally subbed because of the birds, don't you dare take them out!
I like the birds and the glimmers of nature you add to your videos. It just adds to the chill vibe imo.
Keep the birds! I love the editing and style choices you make on this channel.
Always enjoy your content mate, its a pleasure
I grew up in a suburb of ATL, but my whole family is from Philly and I grew up spending summer vacations there. I feel like going back and forth made my accent more neutral, but I do use the "awf" sound a lot. Also I have some other regional things like water (worder) and the vowel sound in for, four, more, etc is a diphthong that is very hard for me to describe lol
I'm from outside of Philadelphia, in Southern NJ. I, too, pronounce off as "awf", and water as "wooder". I live outside of Boston now and have even had to change my pronunciation of water because I was not understood.
I'll never understand how us New Yorkers and New Jerseyans let you out of your rectangle containment state with your soapy wooder and mean ass home game crowds.
@@bethgraham76 That's funny. I've heard if you wanna pronounce street names in Boston correctly just say it like a toddler lol
@@AAA-fh5kd or Pennsylvania Dutch English accents (they're traditionally non-rhotic) potentially in Southeastern PA, lol
Sorry, had to mention them
From Philadelphia as well -- and the other distinction I'm finding is that we have a trap/bath split, but not with that Cockney "bahth" vowel. Instead, we push the /a/ in "bath" up into our nasal passages. Trap and ... well, I can't write it here because I've never found an IPA symbol for it.
We actually have a minimal pair with those vowels -- "can" meaning "am able to" and "can" meaning something you drink soda out of. Very different vowels, immediately recognizable, not on Simon's lists.
Of all the CZcamsrs to know about each other, you and Dr. Lindsey shouldn't be surprising, but it makes me happy.
The birds are great and I love the variety they bring to your videos.
This is really interesting! I really love these deeper digs into what differences you get among dialects. Having learned Norwegian and some Swiss German it is impressive how vowels change and differ.
And I'm just an amateur and not a linguist
Also: I like the bærds...
Thank you again, Simon. One minor observation about the pronunciation of "gone": in London it used to be "gawn", in Oz it's more like "gorn". I'm from SE England and the way you pronounce "cot/ caught/ cloth/ trap/ bath" is very close to mine, despite being a full-time resident of Australia for more than three decades. [edit] 7:49 onward, the "bath/ pass/ staff" pronunciation is very SW England (esp Cornwall) when I was living there /edit
I'm not sure about this, but what I have read has led me to believe that all varieties of North American English that have not merged the cot and caught vowels have the lot cloth split, meaning that cot is distinguished from caught AND from cloth, but cloth and caught have the same vowel. Sometimes certain words may have the cot or the caught vowel depending on region, like the word "on," but I'm not sure where the second row at 0:14, the one labeled "many parts of eastern U.S." would be spoken. Not all of them realize the caught/cloth vowel the same way, big urban centers definitely have that intense diphthong, but the distribution, I believe, is the same.
this channel is a gem i always found it cool how malleable english is so that u can phrase one thing in lots of diff ways
Keep the birds!! We love them
Very interesting. I enjoy the birds
I concur with your view that the birds are nice.
Great job! The correlation/parallel between the trap-bath and the lot-cloth split was news to me, but thanks to your explanation it's now so obvious. Living in NW Ohio back in the late 1990s, I noticed the lot-cloth split early on and adopted it. Only much later (looking at you, Monty Python) did it dawn on me that it used to be a thing in Britain as well.
I see a thumbnail of Bernie Sanders speaking my ancestors' dialect, I click! Thank you, Simon, for a great video! I'm a native of New York English and definitely have the distinct "aw" sound, which I have to suppress.
I'm a little surprised to see that [ɔ]-lacking West Coast vowel system as "standard"; I was taught the "eastern US" as the standard in school, which included downplaying the New York "aw" and saying [ɔ:] 'properly'. Also, we northeastern US speakers *definitely* have a trap-bath split which isn't shown here. Not the British one which involves an "ah"-like sound in "bath", but they're very different. "Marry" and "Mary" form the most famous minimal pair, and "have/halve" is another. Have, cat, clap, cadge, Al, Dad, and Gary have the 'trap' vowel and bad, mad, cash, badge, salve, slam, after, fan, stab, and Mary have the 'bath' vowel. It feels like a lot of following unvoiced consonants get the 'trap' vowel and voice consonants often get 'bath', but there are lots of exceptions so I can't figure out what the rule might be, if there is one.
Very interesting, thank you. The birds are nice, I like that you show them.
I love Bernie's accent
He grew up in Brooklyn NY, went to university in Chicago, and has his political career in Vermont. And I too love his accent, it's YUGE!
0:56 I'm impressed by how you managed to capture this difference. I'm trying to replicate it myself, but I can't seem to do it...
In some English TV programmes from the 60s/70s, I’ve heard people pronounce “hospital” with the “aw” sound, almost as if they were saying “horse-pital”. These speakers weren’t particularly RP and certainly not cockney. Perhaps that pronunciation of the word had hung on longer than with other “cross” sounds.
Off topic, but I’ve always wondered why the cockney pronunciation of “transport” doesn’t use the same vowel sound as “dance”, but instead a longer “trap” vowel sound. Hope I’ve explained that OK.
One interesting aspect of vowel mergers is how they carry over into other languages, for example, here's how the vowels are usually pronounced in English loanwords adopted into Czech (my native language):
COT - [o]
CAUGHT - [oː]
CLOTH - [o]
TRAP - [ɛ] (merged with the DRESS vowel)
BATH - [aː]
This happens with Pennsylvania Dutch a fair bit as well. Lots of English words after about 300 years of contact and you can see where some have been adapted to Pa Dutch like 'fannich' (funny) where English /ʌ/ has become [ɑ~ɒ] whereas in later loans like 'Baenk' (bank, as in the institution) the AE represents the vowel [æ], the somewhat same as English (I would pronounce bank as [beŋk] personally)
That's probably not a merger. Non-English natives just pronounce the words with the rules of their language. In Czech, you only have [o] / [o:] (wiki/Czech_phonology), so naturally natives of Czech don't differentiate between [o]/[ɔ]/[ɒ]. In German we have a long [o:] and a short [ɔ], so the closest we get to cot/caught/cloth would be [kʰɔt]/[kʰɔːt]/[kʰlɔs]. That's just us having an accent. :D There might be some mergers in Czech of course, I don't know about that.
@@SolarLingua Nobody said Czech had mergers
Where I live in central England many people use both ways of saying words like "bath" because we live right on the border between those two areas. But for some reason it's more common with certain words, and less with others. For example "grass" is almost always pronounced the northern way, whereas "after" / "afternoon" is more likely to be pronounced both ways.
That likely has something to do with “after” and “afternoon” being a bit more common words to use than the (still somewhat common) word “grass.” What quality do you use for the most uncommon BATH set words?
The only time I've noticed an A being pronounce in that long southern way is when it's followed by an R.
great video as always
The video was very interesting as usual.
I live in Bath, and our city has a strange relationship with the 'a' vowel in the trap-bath split.
Certainly, no one from Bath uses the short /a/ vowel of northern dialects, but there's a clear divide in the city between different realizations of the 'long a' in the word 'Bath'.
Among native Bathonians and especially lower social class, a more conservative long, raised vowel predominates: /baːth/. But Bath is also a fairly posh city with a lot of admixture of well-to-do people from further afield, so there's also a very widespread long, lower 'a' vowel that marks the 'posh Bath' accent: /bɑːth/.
Non locals, especially northerners but also southerners with SSE accents, often stereotype or mock the local accent as pronouncing something like 'barf', but I think this is largely invented pronunciation, a kind of 'mummerset' pastiche of westcountry accents by those who aren't familiar with the city, as in my experience, while the traditional Bath accent can be rhotic in a lot of cases, there is never rhoticisation in the name of the city. The more local pronunciation is /baːth/, the posh pronunciation is /bɑːth/, but short vowel /bath/ is used only by those hailing from north of the Watford gap, and any version along the lines of /bɑrth/ is probably invented (or possibly authentic for speakers from much further West, I can't say for certain.)
As for me, I've lived in Bath and London so I have terrible wandering accent syndrome - my pronunciation of the name of my own city varies depending on who I'm talking to, and sounds inauthentic in both situations 😅
When I say /bɑːth/ I feel like I'm affecting a posh accent, when I say /baːth/ I feel like I'm imitating a local accent. The curse of the code-switcher: I can't remember what my authentic natural pronunciation is and so I feel like a fraud in both cases.
In Bristol (ten miles away) it is something like 'Baeth' but a long ae, but that is the local accent and not the local variation of RP. At least one Saxon charter uses ae for Bath, incidentally, so it goes way back.
Excellent video as always.
It is a huge understatement to say that “cloth” being pronounced like “clawth” is a “conservative” feature of cockney and RP. It is practically extinct in both. Prince Charles doesn’t do this but the queen did. Alan sugar, who is the oldest famous cockney I can think of, also doesn’t do it.
I say something to this effect later in the video :) Although with this kind of thing I tend to lean towards understatements, as I know my experience doesn't necessarily reflect everyone's; I don't want to accidentally say that a particular feature is extinct and have somebody watching become upset because they have that feature.
@@simonroper9218 Very good point :)
What about Michael Caine?
As other commenters point out, North American accents that don't have the merger always have CLOTH with THOUGHT (i.e. I am not sure about your Many parts of the eastern US).
And also, TRAP and BATH definitely do not have the same vowel in Eastern urban centres such as New York (and Philadelphia), as most BATH words have the /æ/ raising.
See Labov et al. 2006: 173.
I love the birds 🐦
Great video. Big fan of the birds.
Interesting. 1) Keep the birds!!!! 2) I am a Midwesterner (from Michigan however educated in an International school in Belgium so possibly a mixed bag), have the lot-cloth split but don’t hear a diphthong in cloth. 🤔 I’ve had three years of phonology so like to think I am quite discerning….at least enough to tell if I’m ‘diphthonging’.
I’m also from Michigan and have a lot-cloth split. As far as I can tell, the whole southern Great Lakes region has this split without a diphthong in ‘caught’ and ‘cloth’. I personally say ‘cot’ and ‘lot’ with [ä] and ‘caught’ and ‘cloth’ with [ɒ].
The great lakes region avoids the cot-caught merger and east coast diphthongization by engaging in the Northern Cities vowel shift. Cat starts sounding more like key-uht cot more towads cat, caught towards where cot used to be.
In the video I was drawing attention to the fact that one particular realisation was diphthongal even though it's often transcribed as a monophthong - genuinely monophthongal realisations are definitely common, and I'm absolutely certain you could transcribe your own pronunciation better than I could :) Sorry for the lack of clarity in the video - that might be worth me correcting myself in the description.
@SwordofStorms I have heard people who speak like that but I wouldn’t say it’s the norm. In fact, it stands out against the typical a/ɔ/æ at least in my circles.
@@TheSwordofStorms what you've described is definitely accurate for me in northern Ohio. Never realized I called those lil furry things key-uhts.
I can't find the Baldric video; where a modern day interviewer is interviewing Simon as Baldric, an old English speaker. It is now listed as Private. It was so useful for my lesson 'Why is English so difficult to spell?', which I regularly teach to Year 4 & 5 students at my local state primary school. Please, please bring it back, your other videos are not so much fun for younger children.
Simon you're a gift
i love these!
I have noticed that the Irish accent on Ryanair flights coming through the PA system uses /o:f/ for “Objects may fall /o:/ff. Is that a normal pronuncation of “off” in Irish English? Do (some) Irish people have a lot/cloth split of the New York, U-RP type? Great video. Very informative.
5:48 did you mean a velar consonant?
Love this stuff!
In my youth in Noo Yawk "after", "bath" and "glass" consisted of a broad "a" something like "bay-th".
From Louisiana, and most accents in and around the South tend to split lot and cloth essentially equivalently to NYC, though with different vowel realizations.
It's not my own accent, but I find myself saying "coffee" as if I were from New Jersey. Just a fun way of saying it!
Will you ever do an updated video on the evolution of English pronunciation?
Some parts of the near-new york area has a trap-bath split in addition to a cot-caught split.
Thanks for the birds, they work well together with some linguistic info that goes beyond my non-english brain. Still nice to hear how geo-location, social class and time influence how we change language.
Wells' Accents of English treats the æ-tensing before voiceless fricatives/nasals in NYC-Philadephia area as part of the TRAP-BATH split (he refers to it as "BATH-raising"). Wikipedia otoh borrows its terminology from the Atlas of North American English and insists it's a seperate phenomena called the "Split-a system".
Your channel appeared in my suggested list and I found it so interesting. I’m not a linguist but I find languages and accents a captivating subject. I’m not an English native speaker, I was born in Latin America and have an Italian background, but I moved to Australia in 2009. I love and enjoy the English language as well as the mindset that comes with it. I discovered that languages also bring a mindset. We tend to think about languages as just words that we can learn and repeat but not f we immerse in it enough, it also changes our thinking process, which I find fascinating.
My only issue is that despite all my efforts I will never sound like a local. I have an accent, quite strong, and I wonder if I ever will be able to soften it. What’s your take on that , can a strong accent be less noticeable? If so , how? Is there specific exercises?
The birds are wonderful. More birds! 🐦 Great video, mate.
I'm from Wisconsin and my caught and cloth vowels are the same but cot is different. I'd transcribe these phonemically the same as what you have in the third row, but phonetically caught/cloth might be closer to /ɑ/ and cot is probably closer to /a/. Not an expert but this is how I hear it! I lot of other Americans hear that midwestern cot vowel as an /æ/ but it definitely isn't the same!
Very interesting. There are some weird hypercorrections you’ll hear from some Northerners trying to sound posh like ‘plahstic’, ‘sahndwich’ and ‘bandahna’ instead of ‘plastic’, ‘sandwich’ and ‘bandana’, occasionally you’ll hear them said by actual Southerners but it’s certainly not part of standard RP or cockney. I hadn’t thought about ‘chaff’, or for that matter ‘gaff(e)’ vs. ‘staff’ - perhaps irregular and hypercorrect versions exist for these too? Also interesting is the way ‘lather’ can be said like ‘gather’ or like ‘father/rather’ depending on the speaker. Despite that, the word ‘gather’ itself very very rarely ever rhymes with ‘father’/‘rather’.
Do you know Simon, the ornitholinguist? yep, I am a subscriber.
Learning English as a teenager and trying to imitate the American accent meant that I ended up with the cot-caught merger, even though I could swear they were different :')
I was the same, I live in Ireland now for the last couple of years, came here fully influenced by american movies growing up. As a foreigner and my english being neutral with american influences, I never thought in million years that I would ever speak like irish people, its simply to difficult to reproduce. But only a year later I noticed I started saying CAANT instead of my usual “american” KENT haha, or, instead of american way of saying Car, im saying Caaarrr just like them, it all came over time and naturally. now, couple of years later, many other pronunciations I adopted.. Language is so fascinating. I have this American friend who remembers how I used to speak before I moved to Ireland, he said its so funny how my talk changed.. I believe now if you spent time somewhere, it is definitely possible to adopt great deal of local accent even if english that you learned as a second language being neutral. its fascinating. your comment reminded of all this
You even got the odd Birdie Sanders in 👌🏼
I was curious, Simon; do you have any observations about musical cultures and the different emotional associations of musical sounds like rhythms, chords, scales, etc., among different cultures? I’m interested because I’m an experimental contemporary composer and a writer on musical topics. Plus, your channel is quickly becoming one of my favorite CZcams channels of all time. Your interdisciplinary intelligence, rigorous critical thinking skills, and broad curiosity are very inspiring. (By the way, if you didn’t know this already, you might be interested to learn that there is an American “bath-trap” split here in Boston among older speakers… “bath” and “can’t” have something more like the “father” vowel instead of the “cat” vowel).
The birds are cool.
I'm pretty sure the lot-cloth split is nearly universal in North America. It's just less pronounced outside of northeast cities.
Also, I wonder if the short-a split in the northeast US is a divergent manifestation of the trap-bath split
I’m a teenager from Chicago and do possess the lot-cloth split, but I don’t think it’s universal at all. My personal bias accrued from hearing everyone around me always using the split leads me to suppose that most Americans do have it, but I don’t know if that’s true. In a few decades, it certainly won’t be - the cot-caught merger seems to be a pretty unstoppable force. RIP American cloth/thought vowels, died Octvember 33 2050 due to violet rampage by the murderous Californian [ɑ].
@@grahamh.4230 Shit, you're right. I'm pretty sure everyone's either got the lot-cloth split unless they have the cot-caught merger. Basically, no one has cloth and caught as separate vowels.
@@grahamh.4230 West coast: *laughing evil-ly* [hɔhɔhɔhɔhɔ]!
@@GeorgeMerl Yep, I think that’s true for most of the US, but not in much of Britain and maybe not parts of the American northeast. Jim Johnson from the Accent Help channel (a dialect coach with some fun quick videos about the vowels) describes it as the four-step ladder of “Hell’s Corner” - father/lot/cloth/thought (not PALM, which is a terrible lexical set keyword). Westerners have no distinction: father-lot-cloth-thought. Other Americans like you and I have a two-way split: father-lot/cloth-thought. Simon has a three way: father/lot-cloth/thought. Step 1-2 is called the father-bother merger, 2/3 is the lot-cloth split, and 3-4 is the cot-caught merger.
I don’t actually know but I’d imagine the short-a split just arose as a phonemicization of ash-raising
i love the tiny central vowel dipthong in the ny accent
We pronounce cot and caught identically (southern Ontario). None of the examples captured it, so I thought I would share.
That raised front vowel in car is also still around in Newfoundland.
This guy could be reading his shopping list and I’d enjoy hearing it ❤
There are just so many English language accents today. Cape Town here. Really shocked when I was in the UK recently at just how great the differences are over a matter of tens of km.
Love the birds. Very interesting stuff
I specially like the birds. I realise it's a 101-level question but could you say what you mean by raised and lowered vis-a-vis vowels? I struggle to distinguish some of your examples and don't know if I could understand if I raised or lowered something in my mouth. Thanks for all this.
I love your videos. I feel like we never got to why the eastern us accents differentiate the way we do- was it meant to be understood that they have evolved along similar lines or that American accents are impacted by changes to British speech in past centuries? I’ve always (Boston native) heard this sound change the most on words like “orange” (aranage) or Florida (flarida.)
I thought you’d end up saying this is from the influence of Italian and Yiddish speech, which is where I’ve assumed it comes from as it seems to be most prevalent (anecdotally) with NY Jewish and New Jersey and Rhode Island italain-Americans. Thanks again for your work!
A word that I find interesting- pronounced in different regions is "Poor".
In my accent (West Central Scotland) cot, caught and cloth have identical vowel sounds, as do trap and bath. In both cases it's a short, mid-placed vowel.
I particularly liked the clip of the collared dove.
I can remember my great-uncles said "awf" for off. ( Northern New South Wales in the '50s)
Is it still said that way in broad Australian? “Piss orrrrf”!
I grew up in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and I have a different pronunciation of bath. It's a diphthong with a mid front e followed by a schwah
How does the ff replacing the th ending in cockney fit into this I can't stop saying barff instead of bath and cloff instead of cloth.
I have a question about allophonic sounds!
In my type of American accent (Pacific Northwest) roof can either be pronounced with an elongated "oooo" sound, OR it can be pronounced as a short "uhf" sound - like "woof" with still a slight O sound, not like "tough" where it becomes a full "uh" U sound.
Sometimes it's a context indicator, like I'd say "up on the roooof" where roof is a noun, but "my mom used to ruhf houses" where roof is a verb. But sometimes it also just depends how it comes out of my mouth and they are fairly interchangeable.
Is this an example of allophonic sounds or is this something else?
Edit: also I love the birds! They are delightful ❤️
Here's another vote for the birds 👍
One of my favourite words for pronunciation is "bathmat."
In my dielect of english (american great lakes region) the o on pot and cloth has the same vowel as rhe a in father. With no rounding at all. We do the rounded dipthong for caught, but not everyone does it all the time and a lot of people dont hear the difference even though they pronounce the difference. By the way i would love id you talked about the northern city vowel shift that affects rhe great lakes region sometime.
Most Bostonians under the age of 60 have the cot (lot)-caught merger. Bernie Sanders is a New Englander (Vermont) now, but was born and raised in NYC and has a very strong NYC accent, which as you say is unmerged. Maybe people tend to think "East Coast Urban" is NYC. Philadelphia has a somewhat similar accent but the Southern New England accent, and the Boston accent, a subset, are not like NYC, especially in the "o" sounds (I don't know IPA well).
My accent is quite different in comparison, I'm also from Britain but I'm from the west country and speech wise, I've had influence from both central and west sides of the country.
This is how I pronounce the words first presented in this video 0:08 :
[kʰɔʔ] cot
[kʰoːʔ] caught
[kʰlɔf] cloth
[t͡ʃɹʷap] trap
[ba(ː)f] bath
I like the birds.
definitely stay with the birds, delightful . . .
Interestingly enough, Im a SE US speaker with the cot-caught merger. Though in some words like "gone" or "on" in your examples, I often switch between my cot vowel and a goat vowel. Though my normal goat vowel is fronted, towards the center/frontish part of my mouth, whenever I pronounce words words like "gone" with the goat vowel, it is pronounced in the back of my mouth.
I've a question about the short vowel in cat and the long vowel in bath, depending on the different consonants that follow the vowel (t versus th). Are you sure that this sound change, if it is one, really occured in English as late as the 17th century? In German we have the same. "Katze" is pronounced with a short A vowel before the T and the German word "Bad" with a long A vowel before the D (which is somehow an equivalent for the English TH here). This could be an indication that the difference between the length of the two vowels is far older, because it's the same in English and German.
That's a good point! On balance, this is probably a case of (some dialects of) English evolving convergently with High German by coincidence; other West Germanic languages like Dutch (and some North Germanic languages like Danish) have a short vowel in their cognate of bath/Bad, so there is precedent for this among Germanic languages. The distribution of the split in English also suggests that it's an innovation in southern England; the dialects that have the split all split off from southeastern British English after about 1800, and most other dialects (e.g. in northern England and Scotland) don't have the split. A few phoneticians writing before 1650 (like Robinson and Gil) described the English vowel system in impressive detail but never mentioned a separate 'bath' category, and the currently-accepted reconstruction of the Old English vowel system has 'bæþ' with a short vowel. Vowel length wasn't marked in Old English texts, so this has been reconstructed largely based on how the vowels developed into modern English; if' bæþ' had had a long vowel, we'd expect the modern word to be something like 'beeth' (because of the dramatic changes to the English long vowel system that happened after the medieval period).
But all this means is that 'bath' probably didn't have phonemic vowel length in earlier stages of English - it's possible that in some dialects it was allophonically long (so speakers would pronounce the vowel longer, but not necessarily think of it as an important difference). A similar thing happens in modern English dialects - for me, the [a] in 'bad' is longer than the [a] in 'bat', even though I consider them both to fall into the same vowel category!
Hopefully I didn't word this too confusingly, and let me know if I should clarify anything :)
Love the birds towards the end of the video. Have you ever investigated any differences in bird song between regions found from researchers in an interspecies sense? Might be an interesting crossover.
There's a simulated flying creature called a boid. There's also a dialectal pronunciation of "bird" as "boid". How do those with that accent pronounce the simulated flying creature? (Nothing to do with boid snakes, which have two syllables.)
3:24 - for the Trap-bath split, presumably, you’re not including the Southwest in “Southern English” accents
You could argue there’s a subtle split in some Westcountry accents, with “bath” having a slightly elongated vowel sound, but for the most part, it’s a much more similar vowel sound than the southeastern and RP versions.
(the vowel being the either identical to “trap” or a slightly stretched version, rather than the more rounded southeastern version as in “bar”)
10:48 - the second of those 2 is the closest to my area for the “bath” vowel.
@11:25 I remember thinking the same thing as a kid but in reverse… I thought English people were pronouncing the /æ/ vowel closer to "ah"!
I never noticed until recently that British people usually pronounce "pasta" with their trap vowel instead of their palm/bath vowel since to my American ears that sounds similar to how I say it--even though I use the palm/lot vowel in that word.
wow, never knew how all these accents are different with these (i pronounce the vowels in LOT and CLOTH and THOUGHT the same way, and i pronounce the ones in BATH and TRAP the same way too)
I have a broadly Northeast US accent modulated by intentional avoidance of regionalisms (but no specific plan) and I happen to pronounce all five differently. Much of the sound variation is positional from deep tense throat to nasal, so I dunno. So far everybody can understand me but I haven't ventured deep into rural overseas territory. I wonder if avoiding the mergers helps with comprehension or if people would just be confused by a weirdo accent.
[kʰɑt], [kʰɑːt], [kʰlɑθ], [tɹʷap], [baθ] is my best effort at transcribing my speech.
Very interesting as a Canadian to only have these splits before r, not anywhere else but so extreme before r that it's a known shibboleth that "sorry" is "soary" in Canada and "sarry" in the US. (I presume it's related to the split... am I right?)
I speak General American. I made my own Phonetic Alphabet which I call 7M Phonetic English. It's just for English and uses simple characters. I assigned 'ʌ' to the 'awe' /ɑ/ sound. For me 'cot' & 'caught' are the same word.
'kʌt' (cot or caught)
'kʌr' (car)
'ker' (care)
'kut' (cut)
'er' (air)
'drt' (dirt)
'lʌt' (lot)